


The Great Haunt Jaunt (or, The Crooks who Took the Books)

by SupposedToBeWriting



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Child AU, F/F, Fluff and Humor, Ghost Stories, Growing Up, M/M, Mostly Fluff, Mystery, Preteen AU (they're like 12), Quasi-Scooby-Doo AU, Slow Burn, The Gang Come Together to Solve a Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:13:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 43,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28058217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SupposedToBeWriting/pseuds/SupposedToBeWriting
Summary: Keen to disprove the existence of ghosts, four twelve-year-olds (Jon, Martin, Georgie, and Melanie) investigate the site of a particularly vicious urban legend: the haunted Magnus House, where three teenagers allegedly died. At the same time, their town is reeling from the theft of over one hundred rare and valuable books from the local library right under everyone's noses. Do their supernatural fears have some merit to it, or is there always someone under the monster mask?
Relationships: Georgie Barker/Melanie King, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 25
Kudos: 70





	1. Dig

**Author's Note:**

> Note on CWs: If there are any CWs to be listed for a chapter, they'll be put before the chapter. That being said, with the nature of this fic being what it is (a Scooby-Doo-esque Kid AU), there aren't going to be many. For chapter one: none.

A knobbly-kneed twelve year old boy was crouched at the crest of a grassy knoll. In his hand was clenched a jagged stick which he had acquired on the way from school. There was a noticeable dearth of them on the windy hill itself and the surrounding fields, but Jon had cut through a shady forest pathway to make it here. There were sticks aplenty littering the path (he had tripped on this one, actually), which he was grateful for. It meant that he didn’t have to go searching for them. He didn’t like stopping there much. Jon didn’t like the forest much at all. Nothing good ever happened to children in the forest surrounding the lake, if rumors were to be believed.

Now, the _field._ The fields held no such dangers. Overhead was a bright and friendly blue sky, pierced through by only a yellow button sun. There were only rolling hills of long, flowing grass. Wildflowers introduced color, little dots of yellow and white interspersed therein. In _theory,_ Jon could see anyone approaching him – whether they came through the forest border or approached from the road in the other direction.

He clenched the stick and drew a long, slow line in the dirt. It completed the square that he had been working on. Identical squares were lined around him, slow and deliberately made over the course of weeks. Some of the dirt squares had clearly been thoroughly excavated, others remained relatively untouched. Jon completed the 20x20 grid and let out a patient hum. There was a tape recorder lying next to him. He dropped the stick and crawled over to it on his hands and knees, before pressing the large red button on it. It stuck there with a ‘ _th-chunk!’_

“Official archaeological notes, date July 19th.” Jon crossed his legs and sat on the ground while he spoke into it. His clothing was smeared with grass and dirt already. While his grandmother made certain that he left the house in clean, laundered clothing, he never came back that way. She had given up on that lecture long ago. Jon wandering out of the house all day had started when he was ten, and halfway through his twelfth year, didn’t seem to be changing much.

Really, nothing had changed much when he turned twelve, now that he thought about it. He was taking a bracing new step into almost teenhood, which was practically almost young adulthood, which was _practically_ almost middle age. The only thing he had to show for it so far was a smear of acne up the left side of his face and three dark hairs that had sprouted on his upper lip. Jon had always privately thought it was very odd that he usually got acne on the _left_ side of his face when he was right handed, and chalked it up to one of the grand mysteries of the universe.

“I have finished drawing the boundaries in the tertiary quadrant. This finishes the initial markings. Should permit acquisition be successful, we will resume artifact recovery.” As he spoke, Jon held the tape recorder tightly in his right hand (he found that the wind was _quite_ audible if he held the speaker far away from his lips) and propped up his left cheek with the other. He shut his eyes while he tried to remember the treasures that they’d recovered, kept safely in an old shoebox under his bed. He could keep it at his archaeology partner (AKA Georgina Barker, one-day PhD in something-or-other-it-usually-changed-by-the-week)’s home, but there was more a risk of some sibling rifling through it.

“So far, we have recovered an unknown blue ceramic –” Georgie _insisted_ it was someone’s old chewing gum, but Jon was _positive_ and kept it with the rest. “A vintage bottle cap, and a wedding band.” That last item had been deemed far too precious to leave with the rest of the artifacts (what if his grandmother went through his room and tossed out anything she deemed ‘trash’, as she was occasionally wont to do?). Instead, Jon kept it zipped up in his bag along with his housekey. The owner had yet to be discovered, but Jon often forgot to ask adults whether they were missing their wedding ring anyway.

So focused Jon was on reporting their discoveries, he hadn’t seen someone approaching him from the forest.

He opened his eyes – and there was Georgie Barker, leaning over him about six inches away from his face with her hands on his hips. Letting out a yelp of fright, Jon dropped the tape recorder and toppled backwards. His head hit the dirt while he scrambled for the button to stop the recording from playing.

Georgie Barker was many things. For one, she was Jon’s neighbor and lived just next door. For another, she was Jon’s best and only friend. For yet another, she was Jon’s partner in crime and fellow archaeologist-in-training - though Georgie had more-or-less stopped wanting to be an archaeologist long ago, and preferred instead to find a job in library media these days. Jon secretly felt the same, and yet still trudged up the same forest path to approach the same hills.

They had been doing this for years, on and off, digging around to see what they could find. It was fun _and_ productive. Initially, they preferred to stay in town (and usually under the watchful eye of Georgie’s family or Jon’s grandmother), but after getting chewed out one too many times over digging up someone’s yard – they had fled to the forest and the fields. Since reaching the old age of twelve, Jon had privately started to wonder if these games were too babyish for him. And yet. He was here, still, and so was Georgie Barker.

“I’ve successfully found the zoning permit, boss,” Georgie announced, thrusting the torn piece of notebook paper at him. On it was scrawled ‘Zoning Permit’ in blue marker – attached was a small bag of sour worms. “Can I start digging in 14A now?”

 _No,_ she was not permitted to start digging in 14A. 14A came after 13T, and they hadn’t even made it to 13F yet. 14A was _months_ away, zoning permit or no, and Jon would not be a very good archaeologist-in-training if he were to allow such a flagrant breach in the schedule.

But he _did_ like sour candy, that being said. His grandmother never tolerated the stuff. She wasn’t much fond of sweets in general. Jon paused, chewing the inside of his cheek, before taking the offered bribe.

Georgie beamed at him and withdrew a trowel from the back of her lavender overalls. Sated, Jon sat back and ripped open the little bag with his teeth before digging in. “We found the bottlecap in 13A,” she explained after a moment. “Wouldn’t it be cool if we found the whole _bottle_ in 14A?”

Ah. That explained the lapse in order. Jon had to begrudgingly admit that it _would_ be cool. He much preferred the organizational aspect of things than the actual, _ah, legwork of it all_. His scrawny arms and legs protested rather easily when it came to digging in packed dirt. But Georgie was on her knees, starting to dig into the marked cell. There was already mud caked on her trouser legs. Sure, Jon would get up and help, it was only polite – after he finished his bribe, of course. He sorted the worms out by color and then popped one into his mouth.

Things had gotten strange – if Jon was being honest, things had gotten strange in the middle of his eleventh year and even _worse_ in his twelfth year. Friendship with Georgie had been simple once. They were often thrown in together, had similar interests, walked the same path to school every day. But then things had dramatically been shifted, and Jon was pretty sure it was his fault.

Several months ago, on this very hill, Jonathan Sims had kissed Georgie Barker. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. She was his best friend. If marriage was nothing more than spending the rest of your life with the person that you liked most in the world, then he fancied that he would like to get married to Georgie Barker one day. _Obviously_ it was more difficult than that, the divorce rate was astronomical in this day and age (he had read that once in a book, though it meant very little to him), but perhaps adults ( _actual_ ones, the ones who had cars and mortgages and stuffing for brains and not ones who were _practically_ adults, like him) were the ones who complicated it.

So, they had become boyfriend-and-girlfriend. At first, it had been _easy._ Nothing had changed besides starting to hold hands on their way to school. And, because married people never went anywhere without the other, they usually went over to one another’s houses after school.

 _That_ had been the source of the difficulty.

When Georgie was over at Jon’s, it was unbearable for him. He just wanted to _read_ in peace, and while Georgie was a voracious reader, she was also an _extroverted reader._ She wanted to share ideas. She wanted to _discuss._ Jon wanted to peel through them as fast as possible and move to the next one. That wasn’t even _touching_ the fiasco of when they had tried to read a book simultaneously.

When Jon was over at Georgie’s, it was unbearable for her in turn (as she would occasionally remark). Georgie’s house was far too noisy to read (not that her parents were very loud, but she had _two_ parents and _three_ brothers and Jon couldn’t imagine how many people could be in one house), and so, he often found himself in a room with Georgie-and-others. And, frankly, how was Jon meant to _know_ that he wasn’t supposed to ask certain questions, like the worst nightmare her littlest brother had ever had or why her eldest brother was sneaking a lady in through his window?

In the end, the relationship had lasted a painful three weeks. Georgie had broken it off right before Geometry. Jon was still of the opinion that he would never hold anyone’s hand again, though he was privately pleased that they argued a lot less and suddenly the UK divorce rate seemed much more sensible to him.

 _Now though_ – there was a troubling development, something that had happened in the past few weeks. Georgie was girlfriend-and-girlfriend with Melanie King, one of the coolest girls in their year. Jon hadn’t even known Georgie was _friends_ with Melanie, and suddenly they were walking down the halls holding hands whenever they could (though, thankfully, Melanie lived too far to walk with Georgie and Jon in the mornings to school). Jon had once come upon them sharing _headphones_ during a free period listening to music. Georgie’s charm bracelet now had an _MK_ on it (amidst other charms depicting cats, a saxophone, books, pen, rainbows, and a UFO spaceship).

There wasn’t any deep-seated jealousy for Melanie sitting in his heart. He had sat back and tried to analyze his feelings prior – had he _like-liked_ Georgie when he had kissed her? Jon thought he had. No, he was sure that he had. And now those feelings were gone, spurred away after three weeks of romance. But, like the dirt he had been unable to chip away from their blue ceramic/dried gum artifact, any romantic feelings he had for Georgie were impossibly interwoven with his platonic feelings for Georgie. He had liked holding her hand, he had liked the shy kisses they had shared walking home, he had liked _being_ her future husband – but it simply hadn’t worked out. And wrestling with romantic feelings that weren’t quite there anymore, he didn’t think, seemed a monumentally difficult task for a twelve-year-old.

No. He wasn’t jealous of Melanie. He was scared. Because, sitting there in the dirt, he knew he had a question burning deep down inside of his brain. Jonathan Sims asked questions constantly, to the dismay and frustration of others – but he didn’t want to know the answer to this one.

If Georgie and Melanie were girlfriend-and-girlfriend, did that mean Georgie was no longer his best friend? Had Georgie grown tired of him and the childish games they played together? Had Georgie _outgrown_ their childhood friendship? Troublesome thoughts wormed their way inside of his head, making Jon feel small and unimportant.

He finished every worm but the last one in the pack. Green-and-orange, Georgie’s favorite. With a sigh, he pushed himself up to his feet and walked over to her. He extended it out for her to take. Georgie paused from her digging, placed her hands on her hips, and extended the trowel out to Jon. A trade. She’d done the troublesome part of removing the grass, anyway, so Jon gave her the last sour worm and set to digging.

“They’re closing down the library for today,” Georgie announced, going to sit where Jon had been. “You’ll have to find somewhere else to go in the afternoons.

Poor. Ever since Jon had been old enough to safely walk to the library, he usually took his grandmother’s library card and spent his evenings there. Gertrude Robinson, the head librarian, knew him by name, though Jon had _never_ thought of calling her anything other than Ms. Robinson. “Why?” Jon asked, wrinkling his nose at Georgie in the sun. Sometimes he forgot that he had to look up – Georgie had started growing very rapidly in the last few months, and now stood a full head taller than Jon did.

Jon hoped dearly he caught up soon. He did hate having to look up so much.

“There was loads of books stolen when they closed for renovations last week” Georgie’s charm bracelet jangled as she put her hands back in the dirt, stretching with her legs out. “Rare ones, too. Expensive ones. The ones keep in that special room.”

“Document storage. It’s temperature and humidity controlled so that the books don’t contract mildew and the spines don’t crack. You’re not allowed in there without special gloves. Though recently, there’s been some interesting stuff about how gloves might actually be worse than using your hands. I mean, you’ve got to wash your hands first. Obviously.”

Georgie raised an eyebrow at him. “Have _you_ been in there?”

Shyly, Jon’s movements stuttered. “Miss Robinson let me in once,” he muttered, “But – but I’m sure she’d let you in if you asked, you know? Especially if you mention that you want to be a - “

“Library media technician.”

“Right. Right.” Jon could still feel Georgie’s inquisitive stare at him. They both wore glasses – had actually gone to their optometrist appointment together. Hers were large, wire, and round. His were tiny, plastic, and rectangular. “Do the police know who stole the books?”

“No. That’s actually why they closed down, I think. To review security camera footage.” Hm. Jon didn’t know that they had cameras in the library. It always seemed like Ms.Robinson was _everywhere,_ watching everything at all times. Somehow, it felt faintly soothing. Nothing _funny_ ever happened in the library under Miss Robinson’s careful watch.

Except for, apparently, book thievery. Jon frowned at her. “How many books were stolen?”

“A hundred and fifty-seven.” Georgie uttered the fact with such alarming certainty that Jon immediately believed her. He supposed that he had no reason to disbelieve her – Georgie’s mother was a scientist (an engineer? A sciencething-or-other, Jon decided) who often gave talks at the library and Georgie’s father was involved in all sorts of community organizations. They would know. “Worth totaling over one million pounds."

One million pounds was quite a lot of money, Jon considered. He couldn’t quite think of what someone would buy with all that money – certainly a home on the posh road. Just outside of town (just outside the field they were playing in, in fact) laid a dead-end road brimming with large estates and mansions. All gated, of course, otherwise Jon would be tempted to clamber over and walk along the large manicured lawns and seemingly empty abodes.

He only knew of a few people who lived there. The Fairchilds, who owned an aircraft company. Elias Bouchard, the headmaster of Jon’s school, lived there with his husband Peter Lukas – his grandmother had once called him richer than God, though Jon wasn’t sure how much money God had and, frankly, he had once read the Bible out of boredom and money seemed against the whole _point_ of things and then his grandmother had told him to go outside. Nikola Orsinov had done something with the theater (or had it been the circus?). One of the mansions was empty, a large ‘for sale: contact Helen Richardson’ sitting plastered on the front gate. Jon sometimes liked walking down that road and sensing the quiet of it.

He had, unfortunately, been in Elias Bouchard’s office more than once – so he had seen him before, though never in his home. Peter Lukas mostly spent his time by the lake in the forest, at his little shack where he sold bait or let people go out in little boats. His grandmother had taken him there once, and Jon had realized that day he was afraid of boats and water and what might lurk underneath. Unfortunately, he’d made that realization in a tiny paddle boat. He hadn’t been back since.

Jon’s trowel clinked against a rock, making an _exceedingly_ unpleasant scraping noise. It was picked up and quickly tossed away while he continued to dig deeper. “Where would they store all the books?” A hundred and fifty seven books was approximately the amount that he kept in his room at any given time (Jon had read more in his life, of course, but his grandmother insisted that he occasionally donate the excess ones), and sometimes it felt like he could hardly keep to his bed.

Georgie’s answer was immediate and confident. “Probably sold them on the black market as soon as they got them.”

“The … black market?” Jon’s eyebrows furrowed together curiously.

“It’s this special sort of marketplace where you can only sell illegal things. Police aren’t allowed in.” Georgie had picked up Jon’s tape recorder and held it in her lap, inspecting the buttons. “It’s called a black market because all of the stall shades are black. I heard you can buy a baby for fifty quid.”

“You can _not.”_ Although Jon was nowhere near confident enough to refute Georgie’s definition of the black market, he _had_ been given multiple Talks by his grandmother about the way life worked. “Why would you buy a baby for fifty whole quid? It doesn’t cost anything to – you know.” Although Jon _had_ recently learned a rude gesture for insemination from watching boys at school, he was hardly going to recreate that gesture in front of a girl – even if such a girl was his best friend. “ _Make_ a baby.”

Georgie snorted at Jon’s answer. “You’ve _seen_ the photos of what a baby looks like in someone’s stomach, right? _And_ they have to be like that for nine months? It’s like _Alien.”_

Having not seen _Alien,_ Jon didn’t _quite_ understand Georgie’s rendition of her hand bursting from her stomach and waving around like it was some sort of revolting creature. He was fairly certain that wasn’t how childbirth occurred. He had read books on that particular topic – well, skimmed them, at any rate. Though – he had never _deeply_ understood what a bellybutton was for, and only knew it was involved somewhere in the birthing process. Perhaps Georgie _was_ correct. “Paying fifty quid to skip that. That makes sense. Do you think people would pay a lot of money for rare books on the black market?”

“Rare _stolen_ books. And sure.”

A beat passed between them. “Do you think there’s a library full of rare stolen books?”

“I mean, probably. You get three more questions for the day, Jon, honestly.”

In that moment – not knowing where it was, not knowing if it actually existed – Jon wanted nothing more than to visit a library _full_ of stolen books. He felt bad for Ms. Robinson, certainly (her rarest books, taken from her? How horrible) but how many _secrets_ would be found within stolen books?

He was so taken with the idea (he could almost imagine the place, wide stone walls, lit only by candlelight, floors that squeaked with every step) that he almost missed something at the bottom of the new pit that he had dug. He struck it with the trowel, and it glinted indignantly at him. Jon sat back on his ankles to stare down inquisitively.

“Georgie?” Jon asked curiously. Though he was asking her, Jon supposed that he wasn’t expecting an answer, really. Jon was the one to approach for all niche matters, and yet – as his fingers closed around what appeared to be a gold nugget, he had to admit that he had _no idea_ about this. The rock shone and dazzled beautifully in his hands; he pinched it between his thumb and index finger to show his companion. “Is there … is there much gold in England?”


	2. The Mystery of the Magnus House

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: brief mentions of gender dysphoria

Martin Blackwood was new.

  
  


Or, he _had_ been, some few months ago. His first day of secondary school had been some months ago, now, and he supposed the novelty of a new person had more-or-less worn off to the rest of the student body. So too had Martin’s sudden and quite uncharacteristic shot of self-assuredness tarnished away like so much silver.

  
  


A new school (a new _town,_ to be precise) yielded bundles of opportunity. A new school represented a new chapter – strike that, a new _story,_ darn it, and Martin Blackwood was going to grasp it and start off strong. The first step had been making himself more comfortable, because he had not felt comfortable for as long as he could remember and a little summer experimentation had given him an idea.

  
  


Prior to puberty, it hadn’t been a _constant_ itch _._ Uncomfortable, to be certain – _wrong,_ however, felt more accurate. Like naming him at his birth had actually been some sort of test, and Martin’s mother had answered incorrectly. Martin always privately wondered if other people were attached to the names given to them by birth, like they were some sort of Christmas gift. Then again, Martin figured, some people were given video games and some people were given clothing three sizes too small.

  
  


Still, he had managed to bear it until puberty had started to strike him. There were some benefits to puberty, Martin had to grant that – he currently stood approximately three inches taller than most of his classmates, for example. Considering he was also a bit big, Martin often stood out physically in a room, which worked at direct odds with his inherent shyness. Nobody had told him that there would be some very apparent drawbacks that made his day-to-day life tense and rippling with anxiety. Martin had started to hate people _looking_ at him – and given his height, people often did.

  
  


That was where the new opportunity presented by the new town came in. The week prior to the first day, Martin had cut off most of his hair. The resulting product was choppy and uneven, but Martin frankly thought it looked _windswept_ (a word that he’d seen in a poem once that seemed so romantically kind for what essentially amounted to ‘sloppily unkept’). He’d also taken to wearing his tightest t-shirt first, and then a garishly multi-colored, oversized buttoned shirt over top of it. Not only did that have the intended effect of smoothing out any unwanted bumps in the body, but _shy boys_ did not wear such busy patterns and wild colors. No, boys with friends did that. Boys who were _confident_ and _out there_ did that. Martin was _sure._

  
  


And it had worked! Martin had screwed up his courage and timidly went to his teachers and said, _yes,_ that isn’t my name on the list but could I please be called Martin, and nobody had batted an eyelash when they went around the room and introduced themselves and Martin had proclaimed that his name was Martin Blackwood and he was an only child and his favorite subject in school was English. And people had been friendly, people had chatted to him, people sat with him at lunch or picked him for projects or high-fived him in the hallways. He was new, and he wore _colorful shirts,_ and once someone had called him funny. Him, Martin Blackwood! Funny! A funny boy!

  
  


Then, over months, it had changed.

  
  


Not out of any ill-will, Martin believed, though Agnes Montague and Jude Perry had bourne him quite a _bit_ of ill-will between them. Not because people didn't like him. He just didn’t know how to … _bond_ with people. Lasting friendships, and making people remember him after a conversation, was hard. When it came down to it, he didn’t have much in common with the others. He didn’t play sports, didn’t do theater, and didn’t play the right kind of videogames. He never really felt like he had the imagination to play Dungeons and Dragons, the money to learn an instrument, or temperament to get involved in religion. When the other boys had started to chat about girls (mostly how they would get their attention, or that they would like to go out for ice cream or watch a film), Martin had outwardly laughed and agreed but inwardly couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about there but _maybe_ he hadn’t just met what movies and books told him was The Right Girl yet.

  
  


Which was ironic, really, considering that now his usual lunchtime routine consisted of sitting with two actual girls: Basira Hussain and Daisy Tonner. He wasn’t sure why _they_ had been the ones to stick around him when everyone else had drifted off – though, in their own way, Martin supposed that they were in a similar social boat to him. Basira was so focused on her academics and her work on the debate team that she occasionally forgot to be nice, and Daisy was so focused on her numerous athletics that she occasionally forgot people were human.

  
  


Martin wasn’t sure what he was focused on. Surviving secondary school, probably. And his mother. Yes, he did do quite a lot for his mother. He’d also like to make it to the next year of school, because allegedly there was an entire unit on poetry.

  
  


“ _Martin.”_ Basira’s voice rang clearly out over the lunch table. Martin startled and looked over at her, only to find that he had completely lost track of the conversation. That wasn’t unusual. It wasn’t that Basira and Daisy were unkind friends (and even, Martin told himself stubbornly, if they didn’t hang out outside of school, they were his _friends),_ but Martin often went quiet unless directly spoken to. “Back me up here.”

  
  


Uh-oh. Daisy was scowling, her arms folded against her chest. She had also moved here this school year. If Martin thought they had something in common ( _finally!),_ it was quickly buffeted by Daisy being a rather … prickly individual that intimidated Martin as often as she defended him. Even now, deep brown eyes were boring holes into his skull. _Argue with me and you die, pasty boy._ The bright, sparkly butterfly clip she wore in her dark hair didn’t exactly temper her.

  
  


“I, um – sorry, who am I – what am I backing up?” Martin asked curiously, blinking his eyes lazily as if he’d dozed off. He hadn’t, really, just gotten lost in thought, but people were far less likely to treat _sorry I’m tired_ as an insult over _sorry I was thinking about something else._ And, to be fair, Martin _did_ often fall asleep in class. Sometimes it was because he was playing The Legend of Zelda until two in the morning, and sometimes it was because he couldn’t sleep for fear of not knowing what he wanted to be when he grew up.

  
  


Basira’s eyes crossed behind her glasses. “You really ought to be getting more sleep at home. Lack of sleep impedes brain function.” Martin shrugged in a ‘them’s the breaks’ fashion. _Impedes_ was a very nice word, wasn’t it? He liked _impedes._ “ _Tell_ Daisy that it’s not safe just to go _running_ through the woods without telling anyone where she’s going.”

  
  


“I don’t follow a trail,” Daisy answered back with a shrug, “How can I tell someone where I’m going if I don’t follow a trail?”

  
  


“She doesn’t follow a trail!”

  
  


“She doesn’t follow a trail,” Martin repeated, in a tone that was very much supporting Daisy’s cause – _if she doesn’t follow a trail, she can’t tell anyone where she’s going. Case closed._

  
  


Frankly, Basira’s stake in the matter surprised him. Basira was not generally a timid or cowardly person – rather the opposite, actually, though he supposed she was ultimately quite pragmatic. Daisy picked up a carrot stick and crunched it between her back teeth. “Besides. Forest is safe. There’s not even bears in England.”

  
  


“’cept in zoos,” Martin corrected, “I went to the London zoo once.” That had been with his grandfather, ages and ages ago – _years,_ even. He couldn’t remember it much, but he remembered being quite keen on the bug house. He opened his mouth again to talk about his trip to the London zoo, but Basira broke in before he got a chance.

  
  


“It’s not _bears_ I’m worried about.” As if she were approximately thirty years old, Basira pinched the bridge of her nose and pushed away the lunch container. “Sometimes I forget you two are new around here.”

  
  


Daisy’s hard brown eyes flicked over to him, and Martin shrugged his shoulders. In that moment, Martin felt a certain sense of kinship with her – being grouped together with her, even if the grouping was as basic as ‘new kids’, was a certain sign of solidarity that he appreciated. “Snakes?” Daisy prompted further. “I heard there’s snakes here, but they can’t move very quickly. And I killed a snake once before. ‘s not hard.”

  
  


“No. Ghosts.”

  
  


_Ghosts?_ Martin let out a confused grunt, leaning forward on the table to listen. Basira’s eyes regarded the both of them, slow, calculating, trying to see if either of them were going to laugh her out of the lunchroom. Neither did.

  
  


Martin didn’t really believe in ghosts so much, though he supposed that he hadn’t put serious thought into the matter. He thought the _idea_ of ghosts might be nice – he’d really got on with his grandfather, and wouldn’t it be good to see him again? But in practice, he supposed it was a little … _frightening._ It’d be like if a tree got up and started talking to you; it just wasn’t the way of things.

  
  


“You two have never heard of the Magnus House,” Basira intoned gravely. In realization, Daisy scoffed and shook her head.

  
  


“The Magnus House is just a _story,_ Basira. I heard about it at Track. If it even _exists,_ you’ve got to take a boat to get to it. It’s on a little island in the middle of a lake, I’m not going to just run into it while on the trail.” Suitably dismissing the danger, Daisy dove back into her lunch. “Ghosts can’t swim.”

  
  


Martin’s curiosity was piqued, and he leaned over the table to ask. “What’s the Magnus House?”

  
  


Both of them stared in a way that made Martin want to shrink back into the table. They weren’t mean to him – not _really,_ anyway, not intentionally – but god, could they both glare like anything. His gaze fell to the table shyly. _Christ, he ought to have just nodded and moved on, shouldn’t he have? Oh dear._

  
  


“You’ve never heard of the Magnus House. You’ve never heard of Michael, Emma, and Fiona?”

  
  


“I’ve heard of _a_ Fiona.”

  
  


“Three teenagers, off to a house and never to return?” Basira seemed sharply persistent, eyes piercing into Martin’s very being. Martin had to break eye contact and stare at the table. It was always hard to tell whether Basira was _displeased_ with him or not. She seemed displeased. But she still sat with him every day. So what did that _mean?_ “Martin, how can you not have heard of it? It was in the news.”

  
  


“The haunted house wasn’t in the news.” Daisy started in, now. “And he probably wasn’t here for it. It was years ago, I only heard about it from my team.”

  
  


“I’d – I’d like to hear it?” Martin tried to amend the situation. He reached for his sandwich and started to take a few shy nibbles at it. “Tell me about the Magnus House, Basira.”

  
  


There, Basira seemed to straighten out her spine and fold her hands on the table. Basira Hussain was one of the top students at school. Some excelled due to seemingly effortless intelligence – not to say that Basira wasn’t smart _,_ but there was a deep intensity and precision to every single one of her actions. She excelled because Basira never let a detail escape her. And honestly, sometimes, she was the slightest bit intimidating over it.

  
  


“The Magnus House was once built in the 19th century to house the total sum of supernatural human knowledge by a local entrepreneur, Jonah Magnus,” Basira recited patiently. Martin had to resist the urge to start taking notes. It seemed like she’d like something like that. _Entrepeneur_ was a good word, too, wasn’t it? French, that was. “He collected books, haunted artifacts, the occasional research subject … right up until his death. If you believe that he _actually_ died, of course. Most anyone would say that he still wanders the halls, furthering his research by brutally murdering the unwitting trespassers.” Daisy, having spent a respectful amount of time waiting, tore into her sandwich with far more voracity than Martin ate at his. Still, he soon finished and reached for a bag of crisps.

  
  


Oh … kay. Seemed like pretty standard ghost story fare so far. Not that Martin had ever been told a ghost story, really, but he’d _read_ that was a thing friends did some times. He’d watched scary movies, too. Well, _sometimes._ There was a nice sort of rebellious thrill when he would stay up later than he ought to and sneak down to the living room to watch things he _really_ should not have. Granted, the last horror film that he watched had resulted in the protagonist’s skin getting melted off his face. He was still having nightmares about it.

  
  


“You’re not even getting to the fun part.” Daisy’s complaint was stated over a mouthful of bread. “Tell ‘im about the dead teenagers.”

  
  


“The dead teenagers?” Martin echoed, attention piqued.

  
  


“I’m _getting there,_ Daisy, it’s no story without the proper exposition. Anyhow. These three older kids – Emma, Fiona, and Michael – they decide to go exploring one day. They’ve heard the stories, figured that dear old Jonah Magnus wasn’t any harm being dead, and thought they’d go poking around.

  
  


‘Course, near as they get in, things start going poorly. Doors opening when they shouldn’t be, clocks ticking where they’re stopped, eyes following them wherever they go. But, they figure they’re just letting the stories get to their head, and they keep moving on. Until they lose Fiona.”

  
  


Beside her, Daisy let out a little shudder.

  
  


“Now, they can’t be sure what happened, not _really._ One minute Fiona’s going into the cellar to see if she can find anything to cart back home, and the next they hear a shout. The floor’s caved in, and beneath it? Hole. To the center of the Earth, they think, but it’s at least far enough to kill you dead once you hit the bottom. Her body’s still all the way down there. You can still hear it cry out for a rope. _Allegedly.”_

  
  


Daisy balled up her sandwich wrapper and tossed it inside her bag. There was something uncomfortable written on her face. She tore open a package of Jaffa Cakes and tried to stuff one into her mouth at once.

  
  


“Now, _Michael’s_ the especially odd one. He got separated from the others, and he got stuck in the upper floors. Apparently, Jonah Magnus was such a weird old guy that he basically built this _labyrinth_ of hallways up above. Very easy to get lost, especially when you’re practically pissing yourself with fear. Michael ended up living longer than the others – dying of dehydration, trying to find a way out of the hallways. _His_ body’s still up there, too, calling out for a guide.”

  
  


That one seemed even less plausible. It took days to die from dehydration (Martin was pretty sure, anyway, which seemed like an awfully long time – he had once went twelve hours without water while outside, and he had been positive he was near death by the time he got back indoors). Then again – he supposed he couldn’t talk. He hadn’t actually seen Magnus House, had he? Perhaps Jonah Magnus was an exceptionally weird sort of person. A labyrinth of hallways seemed entirely plausible for a weird person.

  
  


“Finally, we’ve got the last one. Emma. She _told_ the others that she would go investigate the first floor. She got herself a glass of water and decided to have a sit in the living room, letting the others do the work. In a nice leather chair, in front of the fire. ” Basira was leaning over the lunch table, now, her eyes flashing with excitement. This was clearly _her_ favorite part of the story. “But of course, she notices – the fire seems to be getting bigger, until it – !”

  
  


Her hand slammed down on the table. Martin hadn’t been expecting it, and jumped about a mile. His milk carton wobbled precariously on the table.

  
  


“ _Grabs her!_ Right in the chair she’s sitting in. Doesn’t even have time to move. Full glass of water still sitting on the table _right next to her.”_

  
  


Daisy had moved onto devouring an apple. Through a mouthful of it, she asked: “And is _her_ body still there?”

  
  


“What? No, ‘course not. Bones are, though. All shriveled up like they belong to, I dunno, a baby? Can still hear her ghost calling out for her glass of water.”

  
  


Martin hadn’t yet reeled from the idea of moving fire. Of course, he wasn’t stupid, he knew fire _moved._ Logically, of course it moved, that’s how it worked. But the best and worst thing about fire was that it wasn’t _sentient._ Fire didn’t care if you were a good person. Fire didn’t care if you lied to people. Fire didn’t even care if you ate puppies for breakfast and orphans for dinner. Fire didn’t even notice you, you just happened to be _in the way._

  
  


The idea of _malevolent_ fire? Fire that could grab you while you were just sitting in a chair? Minding your own business? Burning you in the awful way fire did its business? It wasn’t like a bruise – it wasn’t like a cut – there was, overall, the loss of self – in the most literal way that the self could be taken.

  
  


He was cooking more often these days. He didn’t mind, he actually sort of liked it. There was a nice sort of routine, especially when his mother wasn’t feeling well and it was something he could do for her. Sometimes, though, when the pan was too hot or the pot was too heavy – well. It didn’t happen often. It just _hurt_ when it did. And _that_ fire was his own fault for being clumsy. Christ, the idea of what the fire could do if it took an _active dislike_ to him? Fire would absolutely dislike him if it could dislike people for how many times he spilled things on the stovetop. Oh, _no._

  
  


Martin didn’t like that one bit. Daisy, putting the apple core aside, tilted her head. “Is that the end of the story?”

  
  


“I mean, _yeah?”_ Basira gave her friend an eye-roll. Martin supposed she meant it in a fond way. Sometimes they could be awfully tough to one another. “Three dead teenagers in a very spooky house, calling out for help and unintentionally trying to attract the next unfortunate trespasser. The ending’s usually a bit more dramatic than that, but if you’re trying to _rush,_ Daisy. _”_

  
  


“I’m just trying to get to the part where I shouldn’t be running in the woods. Again, Magnus House is on an island. In the middle of the lake. I can’t run to an island in the middle of the lake.”

  
  


He could tell that Basira didn’t particularly appreciate the tone. “It’s still not safe,” she simply announced in a curt voice. “There are other frightening things in the woods _besides_ ghosts. And who said that ghosts can’t swim? My _point_ is that travelling alone near an area with known supernatural phenomena is a bad idea. Maybe Jonah Magnus goes on hikes.”

  
  


“Kay.” Daisy gave a brusque shrug of her shoulders.

  
  


Martin pushed his glasses up. But who was to say that the fire was a malevolent force, anyway? It sounded like that Emma girl wasn’t being very good to her friends, just waiting around in the sitting room. Maybe it was a fire that went after bad people, which would make it a benevolent fire. Then again … well, Martin _did_ make a lot of mistakes. More than other people seemed to make. Did that make him a bad person? Would _the_ fire go after him, even if it was a fire that only struck down bad people?

  
  


Did that make it better or worse? At least a malevolent fire attacking him would open up the possibility that he was a good person being wrongfully punished. No, wishing that a _malevolent_ fire existed _instead_ of benevolent one _definitely_ made him a bad person. Oh no.

  
  


“Martin’s zoned out again,” Basira was saying when Martin’s train of thought returned back to him, and he blinked. This time, he hadn’t even properly been paying attention, and his cheeks flushed red with embarrassment. His eyebrows crinkled up behind his glasses, silently begging to be caught up. “Daisy says ghosts are a load of crock. What about you?”

  
  


_Right!_ Right, that had been a ghost story. With dead teenagers. Older than him, even. And he’d been so worried about a – a fire that could kill him. Christ, that was selfish, wasn’t it? Couldn’t he spare a bit of sympathy? Martin blinked. “I mean – I think so?” He struggled to recall. “Um. I think … most religions have ghosts. Sort of. Saints and things. They’re sort of like ghosts, right?”

  
  


Daisy’s head fell into her hand. Martin suddenly wished he had said that ghosts could never exist, and anyone who believed ghosts existed had probably hit their head very hard at some point in their life. So there. “Not _religious ghosts,_ Martin. Spooky ones. Can’t find peace after death, all that.”

  
  


“Oh.” Not too late to change his answer. Good! “I guess – no? No, I don’t think so. Um, when people are dead, they’re just pretty much dead.” He’d felt that at his grandfather’s funeral, morbidly enough. There sure had been a body there, but there was nothing _in_ it. His grandfather wasn’t going to sit up and shake Martin’s hand like he was a proper businessman selling stocks, the way his grandfather always greeted him. Martin had liked that. And hey, if ghosts _did_ exist, he didn’t think he would be too fussy about receiving a handshake from a ghost. “I don’t know why they’d want to come back, really.”

  
  


“Right. There’s just no reason for ghosts to exist,” Daisy added on, matter-of-factly. “Once you’re dead, you’re dead. Doesn’t matter how you die. I bet someone could go in that house and walk around for hours and not find anythin’.”

  
  


… Martin wasn’t quite willing to go _that_ far, was he? Sure, he found that he genuinely didn’t believe in ghosts, but there was danger to be found in old abandoned houses. _Asbestos,_ maybe. _Lead._ Things that made your tongue grow fur and your teeth fall out. And that seemed plenty supernatural on its own, so why couldn’t something else exist? “Yeah,” Martin just added faintly. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  
  


Basira let out a noise of skepticism. She and Daisy devolved into bickering about the supernatural and whether it existed and whether the Magnus House could be haunted and whether Daisy _was_ going to get murdered through her nightly runs and – it was such passionate debate that Martin found he could get very little in edgewise. Eventually, a loud guffaw from across the room drew his eyes to another table.

  
  


The laugh had come from Melanie King. ‘Coolness’ had been a much less quantifiable metric than Martin had been led to believe. For instance, he thought Basira and Daisy were _very_ cool people, but found that they weren’t exactly flush with friends themselves. Now, Martin didn’t know Melanie King very well, but the same could not be said for her.

  
  


Martin had a running theory that it was the nose piercing. Or the new purple streak in her hair. It made Martin go a little cross-eyed, looking at his own. The longest curl _just_ about fell in front of his eyes. His mother would have _kittens_ if he so much as brought a box of hair dye home.

  
  


She had one leg propped up on Georgie Barker’s chair. Martin knew Georgie even less than he did Melanie. At least he had pointed out to Melanie once that her jacket was inside out, but he couldn’t think of any time that he’d spoken a word to Georgie Barker. But the table was clustered with people, and he could see that even she was looking a little overwhelmed with being in the middle of the limelight. One finger nervously twisted around and around her hair, even as she smiled and laughed with the others.

  
  


Oh, he could understand _that_ feeling. He felt a smidge of sympathy from across the lunchroom. Martin turned around to see that Daisy and Basira had finished their quiet bickering. They’d finished their lunch – most students had, and were quickly starting to get up and throw their bags over their backs. “I’m _telling_ you,” Daisy was insisting, “That house is _fine._ That story about the dead kids? Even if it _is_ true, they did the exact opposite of what you’re meant to do. Don’t split up. Don’t act stupid. Don’t get greedy, and you’d be _fine.”_

  
  


“If you say so,” Basira intoned, crossing her arms. She was nevertheless unimpressed. “If you say so.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So! - A brief note about my Martin headcanon. I've always thought of Martin as trans, who realized and started transitioning during his early twenties. However, writing an entire fic of Martin pre-transition opened another whole can of worms that felt extremely off to me (but certainly not as off as just making him cis, yikes). So here's my middle ground - a Martin who realized he was trans at a young age, even if he didn't quite have the access to learn the terminology.
> 
> And just as a general note (that might be obvious, but might also be good to have the reassurance) - there's going to be no transphobia from any of the characters in the fic directed at Martin, including Martin's mother. Not necessarily because that would be problematic to write about, but sometimes it's nice to write a fic where transphobia/homophobia doesn't exist - especially for a tween mystery!


	3. Ghost in the Attic

The camera focused in on a wicker rocking chair, surrounded by piled-high boxes. Light streamed in through the one lone window in the old attic. It hit the chair just so, dust motes playing and dancing in the rays. The entire scene might have been idyllic, even peaceful, if the lens was not partially covered by someone’s thumb and the entire camera held with a slightly wobbly hand.

  
  


“I’m _telling_ you,” Melanie’s whispered voice came from behind the camera, a fair distance – not the one holding it. “It _moves._ Every day, around this time, I can hear it rocking from my room.”

  
  


Georgie let out a noise of understanding. Melanie took a few steps forward, in front of the camera, to examine the chair. There was a certain cautiousness to her movements, as if she expected a ghostly hand to reach out and swoop in. Which, Georgie considered, it very well _could._ She’d long since suspected the existence of ghosts and ghouls and things of that nature, but that only heralded a _greater_ need for proper documentation.

  
  


“October 24th. 1999,” Georgie announced with overly emphasized diction. “Today we’re investigating an alleged poltergeist residing in the attic of a Melanie King. Subject makes itself known by – _Melanie,_ you can’t get too close to it.” In the viewframe, Melanie’s head popped up to turn back at Georgie. Melanie had started to creep within grabbing distance of the chair, each footstep letting out a painful _creaaaaaak_ against the attic floorboards. “It ruins the integrity. People will say it’s a hoax.”

  
  


Nodding, Melanie took a step backward into the sunlight given by the window. Her shadow fell over the chair. “Subject makes itself known by causing seismic disturbances within the vicinity of this chair.” _Official._ Georgie’s favorite genres were found footage and ghost stories, and she had noticed a trend within some of the terminology. “We aim to capture this alleged phenomena on film today. Right, Ms. King?”

  
  


Melanie bobbed her head up and down enthusiastically, her earrings jingling wildly. Georgie had noticed her affinity for novelty earrings some time ago – the ones dangling from her earlobes were tiny shiny beetles. “ _Actual_ paranormal evidence in my house,” Melanie added with a grin. “Crazy.”

  
  


“Do you know of any mysterious deaths that have ever occurred here, Ms. King?”

  
  


“ _Georgie,_ you know you can call me Melanie, right?”

  
  


“It’s for the film. I’m doing an interview, so I’m being professional.” Georgie gave the camera an emphatic wiggle in Melanie’s direction. “Mysterious deaths. Give it up.”

  
  


Melanie had opened her mouth to answer – probably, Georgie already knew, nothing helpful. The house wasn’t that old and Melanie had been there when it was just being built. Other than a couple of jars worth of fireflies or a bird that Melanie’s dog had tracked in, _probably_ no tragic deaths occurring there. But someone could dream. Maybe Melanie would make something up to make things a little more exciting. It would have to be edited out for the film, because Georgie was _not_ going to engage in intellectual tomfoolery, but it would be fun, either way. Melanie always had a way of making things dramatic.

  
  


Before she could answer, however, there was a large _bang_ from downstairs and the sound of stomping feet. Melanie wrinkled her nose and looked out the window. Her siblings must be home, and they were rarely very quiet. Melanie was the youngest of three by several years. Georgie liked them – privately thought that it might be nice to have some company. Georgie’s siblings were all _boys_ and sometimes the older ones were a bit mean and sometimes the younger one was a bit needy and sometimes it felt like her parents forgot she was there. Then again, she often had Jon for company, even if he was a little hard to be around sometimes.

  
  


As the King procession stomped into the living room downstairs, the camera shot started to wobble. It was punctuated by a large _slam!_ Of the front door. That was enough to dislodge some dust from the ceiling, causing Melanie to sneeze. Her beetle earrings flashed in the light of the attic, temporarily drawing attraction from the camera, before the rocking chair began a definitive, slow _creeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak!_

  
  


Melanie’s hand shot out to point at it as if she were a lawyer making her final damning point in court – and like Georgie was the jury, she gasped loudly in shock. They had to _go._ There was a _ghost here._

  
  


Both girls raced down from the attic, their feet pounding on the wooden stairs that led to it, before taking refuge in Melanie’s room. In theory, Melanie’s older sister stayed there as well – Georgie was often sat on her bed – but given a boyfriend and a car, she was rarely home. Today, though, Georgie was shoved up against Melanie’s shoulder as they reviewed the footage.

  
  


“That’s definitely a spirit orb,” Melanie announced with utter sincerity. Georgie let out a sigh and rewound the tape again a few seconds. A particularly opaque dust mote span in the sun, seeming to dance with a life of its own. “An _actual_ spirit. Probably the one that haunts this house.”

  
  


“It only moves when you move your hand, really. Look,” Georgie gestured to the footage, and she saw Melanie force a frustrated look off her face. “I really do think it’s just you kicking up dust in the attic. When’s the last time it’s been dusted?”

  
  


Georgie wasn’t sure if she believed in ghosts, not really, but the study of it all was fascinating enough. And sometimes, she felt like Melanie believed so _much_ that it would be kind of rude not to keep an open mind about it. It was certainly more fun to believe, anyway, and it wasn’t like she’d be scared of ghosts even if they _were_ real. Believing in them felt about as consequence-ridden as believing in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.

  
  


Still, it was clear that her explanation was enough to sway Melanie from her beliefs. She let out an aggravated groan and flopped backwards on her bed. Georgie reached over to give her a sympathetic pat. Or – no, should she have been holding her hand? Melanie’s own were still gripping the camcorder, so Georgie was pretty sure she was in the clear, but a _guide book_ to this sort of thing would’ve been well-appreciated.

  
  


She’d sort of dated Jonathan Sims, before, but they were such different people that it didn’t feel like she could apply the same rules. Jonathan Sims was perfectly happy to hold hands and read for six hours. Melanie had gotten into a fight with a boy who’d put gum in her seat.

  
  


“Of course there’s no ghosts, here,” Melanie complained, shutting her eyes in defeat. “This house was built in 1994. I think it was forests or summat before. So what could there be, really? Ghost deer? Nobody’s ever seen a ghost deer.”

  
  


“There could be ghost deer.” Georgie reassured. “I mean, probably not in the attic or anything.”

  
  


“We need to go somewhere _old._ Somewhere awful things have happened, somewhere there’s _sure_ to be ghosts around. I mean, if we could get _proof_ of something like this …” Melanie tapped her finger against the side of a camcorder. Georgie was never sure what Melanie wanted to do, exactly, beyond prove things to herself.

  
  


Either way – it gave Georgie an idea. It was an idea that, she felt, might be too frightening for Melanie (because for all her girlfriend’s bravado, Melanie did still get scared) of things. A clear look of indecision passed over her face, just in time for Melanie to crack an eyelid and catch it. “You got something? Spit it out.”

  
  


“Magnus House is pretty old,” Georgie offered, “And all those teenagers died there, you know. You’d think – I mean, if there’s a ghost anywhere … ?”

  
  


There was some danger involved, of course. That house had been around since at _least_ 1818, and it was a surprise it was still standing. Houses that old and surrounded by water did that sort of thing. Not to mention that there was the issue of actually rowing out to the middle of the lake.

  
  


Melanie was quiet for a long time, though had shifted her gaze to stare at the ceiling of her bedroom contemplatively. Georgie tried to read her face and saw nothing – eventually, she leaned over to tap Melanie’s forehead. “What are you thinking?”

  
  


“I’m thinking that – I’m thinking that we’re going to need more than just us. And we _can’t_ tell our parents.” That much, Georgie knew, was a given. Their parents were rather relaxed about most things (and Melanie, being the youngest, could get away with a _lot),_ but somehow trying to capture ghostly evidence of a spooky old manor was probably going to stretch the parental limits. “And – And I think – _yeah!”_ Melanie suddenly sat straight up in her bed. That fierce sort of twinkle entered her eye, the one that she’d gotten about four hours before Georgie had carefully and nervously put a needle through her eyebrow.

  
  


The sensation of _oh, we’re really in it now_ crossed over her mind. A thought had entered Melanie’s mind, and even if she entered the Magnus House on her _own,_ there would be no convincing her not to.

  
  


Well. That was just it, then. Georgie certainly wasn’t going to let Melanie going alone. And it sounded _interesting,_ didn’t it? If there was going to be ghosts anywhere in their small town, then they would certainly exist in the Magnus House. Whether it was the ghosts of Emma, Fiona and Michael or simply Jonah Magnus still tottering around – they could prove it was true, once and for all.

  
  


“I think we can do it, Georgie!” Melanie went on excitedly, starting to tap out a rhythm on her breastbone with her hand while she thought. “We just have to bring a camera, and – and maybe a notebooks, and I can go and bring the Ouija board, and –” Her head whipped around to face Georgie, her eyes alight with enthusiasm. “This is the best idea you’ve ever _had!”_

  
  


Being Melanie’s girlfriend was leaps and bounds different from being Jon’s girlfriend. Jon wasn’t a mean person, he just had no clue how other people’s brains worked and sometimes concluded that they just _didn’t._ Jon also was deeply unexcitable as a person, and often fretted and worried when trying something new. Georgie _loved_ trying new things and hated the idea of falling into a simple routine.

Besides, sometimes being Jon’s girlfriend felt a little too much like _taking care of_ Jon. Trying to convince him to do new things or to try and explain to her brothers that he didn’t mean any harm with his questions or something like that. Being his friend was much better. Because she did _care_ about Jon, obviously, they’d been together through nearly everything – but some space was good sometimes.

  
  


Now, Melanie was often enthusiastic to the point of explosion at the idea of new things and often came up with them herself. She said what she wanted and did what she thought was right and nobody was going to stand in her way, and Georgie _really, really_ liked that about her. Even now, as Melanie complimented her on her idea, Georgie felt her cheeks grow warm and she muttered something like ‘you’re welcome’ while she tried to pull herself together.

  
  


_Gosh._

  
  


Melanie was already leaning off her bed as she rummaged for something, upside down, under her bed. She withdrew a large pink and purple sparkly backpack, different from the one that she had carried to school.

  
  


When Melanie and Georgie had first started talking, Georgie had noticed that Melanie had much more of a … _sparkly_ style. It wasn’t a bad thing, really, Melanie just liked pink and liked glitter and even had a unicorn notebook, which Georgie privately thought was _so_ early 1990s but admired her boldness. As they’d gotten closer, and Georgie had felt comfortable showing more of her interests – Georgie liked _ghosts,_ and Georgie liked _reading_ (her favorite author was Edgar Allan Poe and she took great pride in being able to recite _The Conqueror Worm_ by heart), and Georgie liked things that could be scary for other people.

  
  


Georgie wasn’t really sure why, but that was when Melanie started to change her style a little, including expressing interest in an eyebrow piercing. _That_ had been something that Melanie had to convince _her_ to do, because if either Melanie’s parents or Georgie’s parents found Georgie putting a sanitized needle through Melanie’s eyebrow – _oof._ And, looking back on it, they were _very_ lucky that Melanie’s eyebrow hadn’t gotten infected and fallen off. If Melanie wanted another piercing, Georgie was already planning to suggest a place in the neighboring town.

  
  


“We can keep everything in here. Easy to see,” Melanie explained, running a hand over the sequins that glittered a little by her desk lamp. “And water. We should probably bring water, right? And – _ugh,_ d’you think Mr. Lukas would take us over the lake without telling our parents?”

  
  


There was a strict age limit on who was allowed to be on a boat without parental supervision. It was not twelve.

  
  


“We can try, right?” Georgie offered. “I’ve got some babysitting money pulled together - “ georgie was a popular babysitter around these parts.

  
  


“Aaah, like a _bribe._ Good idea, yes,” Melanie went on, even if what Georgie had suggested was – at least in her mind – a perfectly legal exchange of goods and services, if flouting the age requirement a little bit. “And he’s _practically_ eighty years old. When do you think we should go?”

Georgie would not say quite _that_ much, he seemed a few shades south of 80, but then again – sixty was practically eighty in many ways. She tapped her finger against her chin. “Ghosts mostly come out at night, don’t they?”

  
  


That made Melanie fall quiet. Georgie could understand why. She wasn’t really _afraid_ of the concept of going to the Magnus House, but she could rationally understand that there were increased dangers at night. She was ready to open her mouth and say to forget the whole thing, that maybe they could give it a go in a few years when they were bigger and thereby better equipped to handle nocturnal predators, and then –

  
  


Melanie fixed Georgie with a determined look. “Torches.” She pushed herself up from her bed entirely to go and rummage with her desk. “We’ll need lots of torches.”

  
  


“Are you sure, Melanie?” Georgie’s voice was no bigger than a whisper. It wasn’t like Melanie’s siblings would be able to hear her, not all the way downstairs, but somehow it seemed to save some of Melanie’s dignity. “If you don’t want to – “

  
  


“I’m going!” Melanie called over her shoulder, and Georgie knew that it was practically game over. Georgie had accidentally tapped into Melanie’s stubbornness. “I mean … “ She trailed off. “If you’re too _scared_ to go, I can go alone.”

  
  


“I’m not _scared.”_ Georgie tipped her chin up defiantly. “Okay. Then we’ll go together.”

  
  


“Great! Great. Great, we’ll go at night. Or, whenever Mr. Lukas is willing to take us over.” Mr. Lukas had the distinct impression of a man who went to bed at sunset and woke up at dawn, Georgie noted, but they’d figure it out later. She didn’t want to press _that_ particular issue too much – she had a feeling that if she did, Melanie would just say that she would pilot the boat herself, and _that_ would be a nightmare. “Who else should we take?”

  
  


Georgie had to consider. Melanie was friends with all sorts of people – she was _fun,_ and _impulsive,_ and that drew people to her like a moth to a flame … Georgie well-included. Still, Melanie was _friends_ but not _close_ to them, which Georgie was quickly realizing was a very important difference indeed. Even if Georgie was often surrounded by people at lunch now, she had noticed that few of them knew Melanie like she did.

  
  


Made sense. That was how girlfriends were supposed to be, surely? That was how it’d been with Jon, anyway, even if it turned out that knowing him more meant that she liked him less.

  
  


Speaking of Jon …

  
  


Jon _knew_ things. Jon had an almost scary knowledge of things. It wasn’t so much that Jon had _interests –_ or if he did, Jon had an interest in _knowing_ things and didn’t much care what it was. He seemed to treat juicy secrets like a hobby and sheer, all encompassing knowing as a career but the difference could be piddling some days.

  
  


And Georgie knew for a _fact_ that Jon knew a lot about old houses, ghost hunting, and navigation. He definitely had an old map of the town that she could nick from his house next time she was over. He would be helpful, but getting him to _agree_ to go there would be a different beast altogether. Jon didn’t like to _do_ things – no, that wasn’t fair. Jon liked to read and Jon liked to go to the library and Jon liked telling people all about what he learned, but Jon didn’t like _adventures_ like this.

  
  


“I can ask Jon,” Georgie offered. Melanie raised an eyebrow curiously. Melanie knew _of_ Jon, Georgie had mentioned him before. It was always hard to know how to introduce Jon – as her ex-boyfriend (which was technically correct, but also felt strangely Adult in a way that made Georgie feel inauthentic) or her best friend (which was also technically correct, but also felt like it would hurt Melanie’s feelings). “He’s basically an encyclopedia. I’ll convince him to go.” _Somehow._

  
  


Jon didn’t have any other friends, but that was okay. With Jon there, Georgie felt much more confident about going at all. He could identify any sort of poisonous or aggressive creature by sight – granted, dealing with the creature was something else altogether.

  
  


“ _Fantastic._ Georgie, I’m _so_ excited!” Melanie turned around from her desk, a wide grin spread across her features. It made her earrings catch the sunlight and dangle wildly. Georgie felt her heart – and face – and weirdly enough, most of her upper arms and shoulders – grow incredibly warm at the sight of Melanie so excited. Being Melanie’s friend – and being Melanie’s girlfriend – sometimes felt like being the leading lady in a James Bond or Indiana Jones film, and (the leading lady’s overwhelming tendencies to get brutally murdered aside) it was _great_ to be swept up in it in something so exciting. “You really are the best for suggesting this, you know that?”

  
  


Georgie pushed herself up from the bed and walked over to Melanie, taking the torch from her hand and tossing it on the backpack. Melanie took her free hand and – suddenly, after a squeak of surprise from Georgie – leaned forward to give her a peck on the cheek.

  
  


_Okay,_ Georgie thought, light and fluttery, _this might be a good idea after all._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's this Sunday's update done! Thanks all for reading and see you next Sunday (and happy holidays and good cheer to all!)


	4. Two for Flinching

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Mild burns, bullying

Jon had a very smart plan indeed, if he did say so himself.

  
  


The concern of the stolen books had weighed on him heavily ever since Georgie had told him about the despicable crime. Certainly, the books were rare enough and archaic enough that Jon was unlikely to ever simply come across them for casual reading. But what if he had wanted to read them someday? Or, rather, what if this was only the beginning? What if more books were yet to be stolen? What if the entire library was emptied out by the end of the year? A library without books was unfathomable. Jon would die without the library.

  
  


He didn’t know what he’d do then, genuinely, aside from the obvious ‘dying’ aspect. Sometimes his grandmother would drive him out to the secondhand shop and together they’d get a stack of books, but that only happened rarely due to his grandmother’s distaste for driving. Jon relied mostly on the library for his literary needs, and the idea of being without it seemed frankly devastating.

  
  


Jon didn’t like to read the same book twice, that much was true, but he liked some that he read more than others. Having old favorite books to read was better – if only _marginally –_ than having nothing to read at all. It may very well be enough to save him from death. Jon couldn’t believe that he was facing this awful sort of decision at his age. Good lord, perhaps he’d be Prime Minister by twenty years old, with all this experience in decision-making. Not that Jon had any sort of sense for politics – or could, indeed, name the current Prime Minister of the country. But he would be an expert in making hard decisions.

  
  


So, Jon had spent most of his afternoon picking his top ten favorite books that he’d ever read from the library. They ranged from classic literature to the history of stamps to a children’s book about a cat who went to Egypt. And the decision to choose all of them had been so _hard,_ but eventually, Jon had chosen ten and quietly went up to Ms. Robinson to check them all out. She had done so with a solemn grandeur.

  
  


The idea of stealing them had crossed his mind, but Jon had dismissed it immediately. That would make him no better than the original book thief, even if his purposes were more noble.

  
  


_However._ If he went home, transcribed all of them into notebooks painstakingly, then the books could be stolen and he’d still have the contents saved. Certainly, it wouldn’t be the same as lifting the cover and smelling the paper, but the important _guts_ of the book would be archived forever. Yes, it would take a long long while to transcribe them, but the prospect sounded much more interesting and valuable than schoolwork anyway.

  
  


Jon tottered out of the library with all ten books in his arms. With his hands being held around ribcage-height, the books were stacked to just above his eyebrows. And _god,_ they were so heavy that Jon’s arms immediately felt like they were about to fall off. He imagined them wriggling on the ground like worms and winced.

  
  


But Jonathan Sims had a duty to maintain, and he was going to see it through – hell or high water. Stepping down the main stairs of the library, Jon decided that taking a shortcut home wouldn’t sh irk that duty but _would_ save his arms. And so, Jon started down the path that cut through the woods. He didn’t much like it, but the path was safe enough with light out.

  
  


The sun had just sorted to dip below the horizon, casting bright-red rays streaking across the sky and cutting through cloud cover. Probably best that he was taking the shortcut, wasn’t it? If he walked the regular way home, it’d be well night by t he time he got back, and his grandmother didn’t like him staying out after dark. Jon didn’t really understand why, he wasn’t a _baby,_ but he had a feeling it had something to do with his grandmother saying he’d lose his head if it wasn’t attached to his body.

  
  


Which was silly. Even if his head _wasn’t_ attached to his body, he’d take very good care of it. Or he’d be dead. Likely dead. More likely than not, he’d be kidnapped and his grandmother would have to post pictures of him on milk curtains, like what had happened to the teenagers who vanished after exploring the Magnus House. Though – Jon had to begrudgingly admit that he didn’t remember _their_ photos on milk cartons. Perhaps it had been too long ago.

  
  


Leaves crunched under his feet as Jon slowly made his way down the path. He wasn’t able to really _see_ (well, more than the spine of _The Eye Book: A Complete Guide to Eye Disorders and Health)_ , but he’d walked this path enough times with Georgie and on his own. Just a straight shot until he hit the flickery lamp post, a right turn and then a straight path until the stone pathway that led to their home.

  
  


He would start with the shortest book, just to get used to it. Probably _Sphynx: A Cat’s_ _Journey_ _,_ though that book relied just as much on pictures as it did words. Perhaps he could trace it. Yes, he’d definitely trace the pictures.

  
  


Or perhaps he would start with _A Comprehensive History of Philately,_ simply because that one had many more words involved? It was also the longest book edging out _The Eye Book_ just by sheer length of index, so best to get that one done first and get it back to the library. He imagined people were clamoring to learn all about stamp-collecting. Jon hadn’t quite started a collection yet, because he didn’t mail many letters, but someday – _someday._

  
  


Jon found himself entirely lost in thought as he tottered down the path – so much so that he didn’t notice the two figures approaching him from the opposite way, crunching on leaves as they went. The scent of cigarette smoke filled the air. He would’ve crashed into them entirely if one of them hadn’t stuck a hand out first. Jon’s forehead smacked into their palm; the tower of books in his arms wobbled but did not fall.

  
  


“Well, if it isn’t _Jonathan Sims!_ The cowlick wonder. _”_

  
  


His heart dropped to his stomach. He knew that voice. Nearly everyone knew that voice.

  
  


_Jude Perry._ Sixteen years old, and apparently didn’t have anywhere better to spend her time than to occasionally harass him and most people in his year. For most of them, Jude Perry’s harassment was indirect: slamming the horn down on her car when they crossed the street or blowing puffs of smoke in their face. She was smoking now, too, Jon could smell the smoke even if he couldn’t see over his stack of books.

  
  


Jon felt very small.

  
  


He was very aware of the fact that he was a small boy in the middle of the woods with absolutely no way to defend himself. And Jude Perry seemed to have a focused dislike on him, for reasons that Jon couldn’t understand. Jon wasn’t social – didn’t stick out – didn’t even stick out in the way that sometimes children did, which made them easy to pick on. Most of the time, he even ate in the stairwell at school. Not precisely from loneliness, but because he wanted to read and people being around sort of discouraged that. He had never spoken any words to Jude Perry without being spoken to first.

  
  


“I’m just trying to go home,” Jon forced out in a squeaky voice, “And these books are very heavy. So, if you’ll please – ”

  
  


“Oh, are they? Agnes, he says the books are heavy!”

  
  


Oh, _no._ Agnes Montague was there, too. Agnes was less of a concern than Jude – she was quiet and seemed unbothered, but Jude was often _worse_ when Agnes was around. Georgie had once explained it to him that Jude was trying to impress Agnes and that was why, which made _no_ sense to Jon at all. He had had a girlfriend once and he’d _never_ wanted to impress her on anything in his life. Sometimes Georgie spoke nonsense. But even if her theory was false, the fact of the matter remained that Agnes being there was no good.

  
  


A hand slapped down _hard_ on the top of the tower of books. Jon let out a startled cry, his muscles crying out in pain, but maintained his hold by pulling it in close to his chest. Jude removed _The Eye Book_ from the top of the pile and inspected it. “Now, what’s this?”

  
  


“It’s – it’s a book,” Jon got out. There was no trace of disrespect in his voice. She had asked, Jon had answered. Unfortunately, Agnes had let out a soft chuckle at Jon’s response and Jude scowled at him.

  
  


With the top book in Jude’s hands, Jon could see the both of them better. They both held cigarettes between their two fingers which glinted across the chains and rivets that Jude had attached to her leather jacket. Agnes had flaming red hair that was braided tightly to the side of her head, catching the rays of the sunset in every strand. Jude seemed to stand in her shadow, but nevertheless, the glint in her eyes was the brightest – _and most terrifying –_ thing around. Jon swallowed deeply.

  
  


“Oh, is it a book?” Jude asked facetiously, winding it about in her hands. “Think you’re just so intelligent, don’t you, four-eyes? Here I am, doing you a favor, and you’re trying to pretend to be cool in front of the grown-ups. Is that what this is?” And, as if to punctuate her point, she leaned forward with one hand and flicked the edges of Jon’s glasses. Her fingernails clicked against them with a dreadful _snick!_

  
  


“No? No. No, of course not.”

  
  


“Of _course_ you wouldn’t, because you’re such a smart little man, aren’t you?” She turned the book around in her hands and stared at the cover. “Now, what do you want from a book like this? Trying to fix your own eyes?”

  
  


“No. It’s difficult to fix nearsightedness,” Jon answered, enunciating carefully in an attempt to absolutely dispel any sort of unintended disrespect. He tried to shift the tower of books, but there wasn’t anywhere for them to go. His arms were numb. “Besides, that book spends a lot more time on the slightly rarer optical conditions – like Bietti’s crystalline dystrophy. That’s where people get crystalline lipid deposits in the in the retina and gradual degeneration of the back layers of the eye, like the retinal pigment epithelium, and it’s genetically autosomal recessive which means – “

  
  


“Christ, where’s the button to turn you off?” Jude joked with a smile, waving the book in his general direction. “You’re twelve, right?”

  
  


Figuring it was the best to keep his mouth shut, Jon just nodded.

  
  


“Should’ve learned that kids are better seen, not heard, yeah? Now, what are you doing with all these books?”

  
  


Better seen, not heard. It hurt not to tell about his brilliant plan with somebody, but he knew well enough that Jude Perry would not be the kindest ear. She might even call him lame. Plenty of people had called him lame before. He dropped his gaze to the top of the next book – _Odysse_ _y_ by Homer.

  
  


“Agnes! Looks like the chatterbox ran out of batteries. Come on, Jonathan,” Jude crooned. And, to Jon’s horror, her hand retreated in her leather jacket and came out with a lighter. She flicked it on and held the tiny flame horrifyingly close to _The Eye Book._

  
  


“Don’t!” Jon spat out, taking a trembling step forward. His arms were really shaking by now. Even without the heaviest book on them, it was _nine books_ and Jon’s arms were going to give out. There was genuine fear in his shaky little voice. “It’s from the library, it’s not mine!”

  
  


“Oh?” The flame sputtered out. Jude gave him a predatory smile. Agnes watched silently, curiously, her head tilted to the side. A wisp of smoke danced from her cigarette up into the air above. Jon wanted to ask _her_ for help, but he was pretty sure that she was girlfriend-and-girlfriend with Jude, and that meant that she _couldn’t_ be trusted. “Then you should learn to answer my questions, eh?”

  
  


“I’m bringing them all home to _read.”_ Jon tried to explain without sounding desperately like a prat. “I like to read.”

  
  


“Ah. Well, then.” To Jon’s immense relief, _The Eye Book_ was replaced on the stack. The extra weight didn’t exactly help matters, and Jon watched as the tower of books started to wobble. God, if it fell, what was he going to _do?_ Would he just take a few home and come back to the path in hopes that they weren’t taken? It would be well dark by then. His grandmother would be quite angry if he left the house at night. “Oh! Looks like they’re a bit heavy for you, aren’t they? Why don’t you put them down for a second? Rest your little arms?”

  
  


The offer was more tempting than perhaps Jude knew. Part of him _wanted_ to throw the books down and sprint towards home, but these were his favorite books in the _world.._ He’d read them each about a dozen times and he _hated_ re-reading books normally. It would be like asking him to throw _baby dogs_ or perhaps _peanut butter sandwiches_ (currently his favorite meal) at her. And so, Jon just shook his head, vision now obscured by the book again. “I – I have to get home. Please.”

  
  


He hated how whiny his voice sounded, mostly because he doubted that Jude would take pity on the way his voice wavered. And, indeed, she didn’t. And he hated the way that his eyes felt like they were prickly in ways that couldn’t be attributed to a crystalline deposit, because he was getting to the age where he believed only babies cry and he wanted so hard not to be a baby. He wasn’t a baby. He _sounded_ like a baby. He just wanted to be left _alone._

  
  


Instead, Jon heard the click of her lighter again and he thought she might’ve been lighting up another cigarette.

  
  


She wasn’t.

  
  


Jon felt something warm, but not desperately hot, on his forearm where he was holding the books up. Fearing pain, Jon let out a squawk and jerked his arms. The tower of books all fell down onto the dirty forest path below, but – more pressingly, in Jon’s mind – he inadvertently jerked his arm directly into the lighter flame. The squawk quickly turned into a shout of pain as he felt the heat burn into his skin.

  
  


“ _Jude!”_

  
  


It was the first word Agnes had spoken during the entire encounter. At seeing Jon’s injury, Agnes turned her head to glare fiercely at her girlfriend. Jude genuinely looked shocked that Jon had managed to injure himself. “I was just _teasing,_ he’s the one that did it,” Jude returned in a whine, but Agnes’ glare did not relent. Jon was clutching at his forearm – tearfully, he looked at it. The burn itself wasn’t _bad_ (at least, from what Jon knew of burns, they were in degrees like murders but they were opposite in severity of murders), but the heat felt like it was going right through to his bones and it _hurt,_ it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt IT HURT.

  
  


In front of him, Jude scoffed and tugged her jacket lapels tighter around her. “Whatever. Let’s get going, Agnes, I’m starving.” She trudged right beside Jon, taking care to kick one of the thinner books that had landed in the dark. Agnes walked behind her, though she took the time to put a hand on Jon’s shoulder as she went – for whatever good _that_ was supposed to do. Jon still clutched his forearm, not feeling at all comforted.

  
  


The sun had nearly set entirely and there were ten dirty books scattered around him, and his arm hurt like anything. The idea of using it to carry books – of the burn mark brushing against the rough covers, of the edges pushing into the tender area – made him want to cry. Well, a _few_ things made him want to cry at this moment in time. Feeling helpless and childish, Jon sniffed hard and stared at the books around him. _What did I do?_ He thought to himself miserably. _I didn’t do anything to them. I was just here._

A bush on the side of the road rustled.

  
  


His nerves already frayed, Jon jumped back from it. Books be damned, he was ready to just break for home and plead mercy on Ms. Robinson later for losing her precious books. Ms. Robinson was the only woman he knew who could strike fear into the hearts of the older kids, and while he liked her more than others did, she also did not withstand ‘petty foolishness’ like this. She would not understand why he had left the books behind.

  
  


A boy, seemingly his age, stepped out from the large shrub. He had frizzy blond hair and acne was starting to erupt on both sides of his face. It reminded Jon a little of the underside of a cooked pepperoni. He also happened to be wearing the most obnoxiously colored shirt that Jon had ever seen. It had vividly colored flowers and bunnies running all across it – _that_ reminded Jon of the bit in _Dumbo_ where Dumbo had intoxicated himself (the movie didn’t _say_ that directly, but Jon was very good at inferring) and saw dancing pink elephants. The shirt made him recognize the boy from school, though Jon didn’t know his name.

  
  


“Are you okay?” The boy asked, and Jon sniffed hard once again and looked at the scattered books all around him. He was still clutching his forearm. An angry red mark seared across it. “Okay. Haha. Silly question, I guess. I’m sorry.”

  
  


Had this boy been here the entire time? Jon hadn’t heard anyone walk into the bush during that altercation, though if he were being honest, his focus hadn’t really been on the bushes. “My name’s Martin Blackwood,” the boy continued. Jon hadn’t known. He had remembered seeing the boy around school, of course, but he saw lots of boys around school. This one was only memorable because of the ridiculous colors on his torso. “I’m … I’m really sorry that I didn’t say anything. I just, um.” Martin let out a nervous little laugh, fidgeting his hands together. “They’re really quite scary, aren’t they? Jude and Agnes?”

  
  


That, Jon had to agree. “Do they mess with you, too?”

  
  


“Yeah. They burned a hole – well, Jude did, I guess – in my shirt last month. The, um, bottom bit of it, I wear pretty big shirts, so, I – I’m sorry that I didn’t say anything. To you, I mean. When they were messing with you.”

  
  


“You said that. That you were sorry.”

  
  


“Well, I guess it’s because I’m _really_ sorry.” There, Martin shyly grinned at him, and Jon supposed in that moment he couldn’t fault him _too_ much. Martin didn’t know him. And if Jon saw Martin getting bullied on this path, he seriously doubted that he would’ve stepped in, because … well, Martin was right. They _were_ very scary girls.

  
  


Jon sighed in defeat. It felt tempting to get angry at Martin, with the way that his arm was hurting, but it felt like all the anger had gotten drained out of him. Had soaked right into the ground around him. His arms hurt from exhaustion and from the burn and he just wanted to eat something and go to bed. “It’s okay,” he muttered. “My name’s Jonathan Sims. But you probably heard them say that.”

  
  


“I did, yeah. I’ve … seen you around, but I don’t really – oh! Sorry, your arm’s hurting, isn’t it? Hang on a minute.”

  
  


Martin disappeared back into the bushes and soon reappeared with a backpack thrown over one arm. Jon raised an eyebrow at him curiously. Did he live out here? Why else would he have his school backpack with him on a Saturday? He’d read a couple of books about boys who lived in the woods, and turned feral as a result, and Jon was about ready to compliment him on his very proper English.

  
  


He must’ve caught Jon staring, because he paused to nervously chuckle and explain. “I come out here sometimes. There’s plenty of nice spots on this trail to sit and … um, think,” Martin explained. It didn’t _sound_ like he was going to say think.

  
  


“What do you think about?”

  
  


“Oh, you know.” Martin dithered. He had opened his backpack and was starting to wildly dig through it with the ferocity of a boy who lived in the woods, Jon presumed. “Stuff.”

  
  


Ah. Deep. Jon nodded sagely.

  
  


Martin retrieved a rectangular blue object from his bag. “Fantastic, it’s still cold,” he murmured to himself, and then a little more loudly to Jon: “I packed it to keep my lemonade cold. It’s an ice pack, here.” He pressed the cold blue block against Jon’s arm.

  
  


That certainly felt nice. Jon didn’t get the impression that it was _healing_ anything, not at all, but it definitely numbed the pain to absolutely nothing. He let out a sigh of relief and kept the ice pack pressed to his forearm with his other hand. As he did so, his fingers brushed along Martin’s – who quickly took his hand back and looked like he was about to apologize again. “Thanks,” Jon admitted before Martin got a chance to. That did feel nice, but certainly didn’t help the problem of the books scattered around the floor – oh. And Martin was gathering them all up.

  
  


“I think all the dirt’s dry, which is good! Let me just, ah, dust them off – there! Very good,” Martin went on, mostly to himself, until all of the books were in a neat and tidy little pile. Martin’s shirt was now streaked with dust. Jon wanted to break in and say that was very kind of him but not _really_ all that helpful if Jon couldn’t lift any with his arms being how they were, and then Martin lifted all ten into his arms at once.

  
  


_Nnh._ Not fair. Clearly whatever growth spurt that had failed to hit Jon yet had hit Martin straight on. The books only reached to the bottom of his chin, and Martin smiled at him atop the stack. “Alright, which way d’you live?”

  
  


Martin was _helping._ Oh. Jon stared at him, shocked, for a couple of moments and wondered if he ought to tell the boy who clearly lived in the woods where he lived. His grandmother had often forbade bringing home stray animals (not that Jon had tried to – lightning bugs in jars didn’t count), but he thought she might make an exception for a human boy. After all, Jon felt like he was sort of a stray when she’d taken custody of him – granted, a stray that she was related to by blood.

  
  


Jon hummed softly and jerked his head down the path. “This way. Um, the house with the stone pathway in front of it and the, uh, the birdbath. Thanks for this.” He started to walk, and found that Martin was following just behind them. “I was just going to leave them there overnight, but then they’d be eaten by the woodpeckers.”

  
  


“Do woodpeckers eat books?”

  
  


“Well, they eat wood.” Jon was pretty sure. He hadn’t exactly read any books on woodpeckers specifically, and where Jon didn’t have knowledge, he took his preconceived notion as facts. Jon preferred to read books on predators because those were scarier, and ‘KNOWLEDGE CONQUERS FEAR’, so-said a poster of a cartoon snake at the library. “And paper is made from wood. So – yes?”

  
  


“Right, right. Duh. That makes sense,” Martin trilled his lips. Jon found that he liked Martin – after all, how could he not? Martin had given him an icepack and was now bringing his books home for him after a very long day. “Well, it’s no issue for me to carry them for you. And my home’s actually nearby, so I was kind of heading this way anyway? All works out.”

  
  


_Oh._ Huh. “You have a home?”

  
  


“Um?” Martin blinked a few times in confusion. “Yes?”

  
  


Ah, perhaps he really did come out into the woods just to think, then. Jon stared up at the sky. The moon had started to rise, and his grandmother wouldn’t be quite pleased that he was coming home late. Seeing the burnmark would probably be enough to assuage any anger, though. Which was good, because Jon wanted the burn cream and couldn’t quite recall what tube in the bathroom it was in. There were loads of tubes and bottles in the bathroom. His grandmother had once told him – in the only swear word that Jon had _ever_ heard her say – that it was hell getting old.

  
  


They walked in some silence, and Jon found that he was additionally grateful for – albeit quiet – a companion. Jon tried not to be scared of the woods, but he couldn’t see very far past the treeline and he knew there were predators out there who would mistake him for some sort of baby deer. A deerling. He did have the wobbly legs of one, didn’t he? And Martin was big enough to at least appear somewhat intimidating, even if he seemed intrinsically like he was a very nervous, fidgety sort of boy indeed.

  
  


“These are some interesting books,” Martin finally commented awkwardly, tilting his head down to read the titles on the spines. “You have a lot of interests.”

  
  


“I like to read.”

  
  


“You do. I don’t think I’ve read any of these, the, ehm, the one about the cat in Egypt seems really interesting – oh, hang on. I think I’ve heard of this one. _Odysseus._ Seems very, um, complicated. What’s it about?”

  
  


Very few people who knew Jon asked him to explain things. Georgie did on occasion, but she knew what she was getting into and used it strategically. His grandmother had a rule that he was only allowed to keep it to three sentences, causing Jon to really stretch the definition of what a sentence entailed. For the most part, Jon explained things out loud to himself or his stuffed cat.

  
  


He really liked explaining things.

  
  


“Well, it’s about this man called Odysseus and it takes place around the Mediterranean. Odysseus is the king of Ithaca. Ithaca is an island in the Ionian Sea and it’s Greek. Anyway, Odysseus was trying to get home after the Trojan War, which took place in Troy, which is roundabouts where Turkey is now.” Martin made a noise of acknowledgment, but otherwise kept silent as Jon continued. “Oh! Wait, hang on, I should tell you about the Trojan War. The rest of the story won’t make sense otherwise. The Trojan War was a war fought against the city of Troy by the Greeks after this man named Paris kidnapped Helen, who was the wife of the king of Sparta, which is also Greek. Wait, hang on, it was more complicated than him just kidnapping a lady, it’s really a bit more _morally dubious_ than that. There were these gods, you see, they were Greek too… “


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: None

Martin had been floating on clouds for a week. He had made a _friend._

  
  


Of course, he couldn’t be certain whether Jon would appreciate such a label so soon, but Martin wasn’t really sure why people were so stingy about the ‘friend’ label anyway. Even so, he wouldn’t want to risk things about slapping the label so soon, but he would continue to privately think of Jon as his friend. And what a good friend he _was._

  
  


Well, it wasn’t so much that they’d spent a lot of time together. They’d spoken to each other a little in the hallways at school, but Jon always mysteriously disappeared during lunch (that was another thing that Martin had learned about Jon – he was _mysterious)_. But just yesterday, Jon had asked him to return the books that he’d checked out from the library. Apparently he had brought them home with the intent of transcribing them, but had gotten bored an hour or so in. Martin couldn’t blame him. Even as a boy who liked writing – well, poetry – he couldn’t imagine writing something that wasn’t his own. And with such _long_ books!

  
  


While they were at the library, Ms. Robinson (scary) had briefly mentioned that they’d gotten a few new books in: parapsychology, anthropology, and a YA dystopian novel. And Jon had lit up like it was his birthday and said he’d be back tomorrow. Martin had had the good sense to say, oh, that was so funny, because _he’d_ planned on being the library tomorrow too!

  
  


He hadn’t, really, but – surely it wouldn’t hurt things? It wasn’t technically a lie if he made plans to be the library at that very moment.

  
  


And it hadn’t hurt things, not so far. They’d spent a few hours already sat at one of the larger wooden tables at the library. Martin had only been in there a few times, because he didn’t have his own library card and he didn’t think his mum would be keen to get him in one. It was surprisingly big for their very tiny town, with large heavy books of bookshelves on either side. The largest and thickest clustered bookshelves were the ones meant for adults, horror and mystery and science fiction and fantasy and the like. Then Martin saw a smaller cluster meant for ‘young adults’ (him???) and the tiny bookshelves with books meant for, presumably, children.

  
  


Martin wasn’t quite sure if he had fully outgrown the children’s section yet, and it seemed absolutely mortifying to ask. It wasn’t like they put age ranges up, and he’d read and enjoyed loads of books in the children’s section before. And some of the YA books had what looked to be adults on them. Some of them were _kissing._ Especially since the only librarian appeared to be Ms. Robinson, who did not seem to be a very nice lady.

  
  


She, at the very least, seemed civil enough towards Jon. She had curtly nodded in the direction of the new books and Jon had picked them up immediately. Martin had dutifully followed and Jon started to dig in.

  
  


If he were being honest with himself, he wasn’t sure _why_ he liked Jon so much. That seemed mean. That _was_ mean. But the important part was that he _did_ like Jon so much! The night he’d met him, Martin had stayed up late in bed staring at the ceiling, going over their conversation what felt like a hundred times. He didn’t even know _why._ It just felt important, somehow. Meaningful. But – for the life of him, Martin couldn’t explain why he immediately felt so _drawn_ to him.

  
  


Maybe it would change later on, because the fact of the matter was that they just hadn’t had _time_ to spend much time together. Honestly, today was probably the most consecutive interaction that they’d had. They had talked a little on the walk over to the library today (Jon had explained to him, very patiently, the difference between alligators, crocodiles, caimans, and gharials) but Jon had mostly read in silence once they’d gotten there. He’d gotten through the YA book very quickly and had wordlessly pushed it towards Martin as a gesture of goodwill. Martin had picked it up and flipped through it a bit, but found himself getting distracted. Bees buzzed in his brain.

  
  


He supposed he liked Jon primarily because he was interesting. And _chatty_ when he wanted to be _,_ the boy had nearly talked his ear off on the walk home about the _Odyssey._ But it was nice. Seeing the light in his eyes, the way he gestured with his hands (as much as he could, with the ice pack), the way he skipped or wrinkled his nose or made sound effects or used fun voices – Jon really, really liked explaining things, didn’t he? And Martin supposed it was good to feel worthy of being explained to. Even if he hadn’t had a clue about most of the things in that story.

  
  


Martin had sort of expected Jon to be the same way while he was reading, but Jon had been silent so far. That was okay, too, because it allowed Martin to get a better look at Jon without feeling like a total creep or maybe an evil clown. Jon had really nice hair, Martin considered. It was shiny and had a hundred million flyaways and a little pinch of it stood up right at the back. _Cow-lick,_ his brain returned to him. What Jude had called him. Was that meant to be an insult? It was nice-looking. His glasses kept falling down his nose, and _wow_ Jon had nice eyes, they were really quite dark brown but Martin could’ve sworn he saw some green flecks in there or maybe that was something being reflected and –

  
  


No. He was being a creep. Martin cleared his throat and reached for the YA book again. He didn’t know why watching Jon’s hair and eyes had seemed like a fantastic use of his time, why it distracted him so much, but he could be _productive._ Like Jon was being. Jon was reading the parapsychology book like it was the most important thing in the world.

  
  


“Syn-chron-ic-it-y,” Jon sounded out to himself in a voice so low it might’ve been a whisper, and Martin was staring at his eyes again. _Synchronicity is a nice word,_ Martin thought to himself, _wonder what it means._ And before he could stop himself, he opened his mouth to ask.

  
  


“What’s synchronicity mean?”

  
  


Jolted, Jon looked up from his parapsychology book. His glasses were low on his nose again. He was sitting with crossed legs on the uncomfortable wooden chair, and Martin quietly marveled how his legs hadn’t fallen asleep. Jon was clearly very talented. “Um,” Jon muttered, dropping his gaze to the page again. “A meaningful coincidence of two seemingly unrelated things.”

  
  


Oh. “What’s _that_ mean?”

  
  


Another pause. Jon flipped a few pages, but Martin could tell that he wasn’t actually reading them, but rather looking at the pictures. “I … “ He pursed his lips. “Don’t know?”

  
  


“Oh. That’s okay,” Martin reassured with a warm grin that creased his eyes. “Is it an interesting book?”

  
  


“It’s all made up.” Jon’s tone was so matter-of-fact t hat Martin took him as the expert. Jon, so far, seemed like he was the expert in all sorts of things and Martin wondered if he was talking to the next Isaac Newton. Or Albert Einstein. Actually, Jon wasn’t that good of maths, he had said that earlier, so maybe the next William Shakespeare. “All of it. Ghosts, monsters, all of it. All made up.”

  
  


Martin remembered the ghost conversation that he’d had with Daisy and Basira some time prior at lunch. Basira was _also_ a very intelligent person, and she seemed confident that _something,_ at least, was real. And yet, Martin found himself trusting Jon more – and _why is that, exactly?_ Martin thought to himself stubbornly. _Because he’s got nice hair and eyes? What’s that got to do with anything?_

  
  


Maybe it was jealousy. Maybe he wanted nice hair like Jon’s? Even if it was an entirely different texture, color, and length?

  
  


“Oh. Do you really think so?” Martin asked, and with a smirk, Jon flipped through a couple of pages and spun the book around to push it towards Martin. The book itself was very thick, and he wondered if this was the sort of book people read in university.

  
  


The picture in the book Jon was showing him was very old. There was always a sort of quiet serenity Martin appreciated in those types of pictures. _Stillness._ This one sent a chill right down his spine, though: there was an old woman in a long black dress seated on a chair, looking grimly at the camera. Behind her, a pale translucent figure – a man – held a hand out to rest on her shoulder. She didn’t seem to notice.

  
  


_The ghost is posing,_ Martin thought to himself grimly. Well, that cinched it, it certainly did – ghosts were real. Real enough to pose for photos, anyway.

  
  


“Fake,” Jon announced in a flat voice. Jolted, Martin looked up at him. “They used to take these plates to develop photos on. And after you developed one photo, and you used the same plate to develop another photo, it would look like you had a ghost. People did it all the time to fool other people. It took them _decades_ to figure the trick out.”

  
  


Well, it certainly had fooled Martin. Martin’s mind spun – plates used to develop photos? Dinner plates? But if he probed Jon a little further, Jon was _definitely_ going to think that he was some sort of idiot. And he really, really wanted Jon to like him? Probably because he wanted Jon to be his friend. Basira and Daisy were fine, of course, but Jon was … somehow different. Probably because he was a boy.

  
  


“Oh. So, um, the ghos t stories about the Magnus House … do you think that’s fake, too?” Martin asked curiously. He’d had a nightmare about fire reaching up to eat him the other night, so it had loomed in his mind. Jon had saved him, though. Which had been a weird dream, but also very good? “About all the older kids that got murdered there.”

  
  


That seemed to stump Jon for a second, and he opened his mouth. No words came out. All at once, he saw Jon’s eyes flick away from him, staring at a space above his head, and then Martin became aware of a _presence_ behind him.

  
  


Martin turned and looked up with eyes as wide as dinner plates.

  
  


Ms. Robinson. _Physically,_ she didn’t look all that intimidating. She was only an inch or two taller than Martin was and much leaner. Actually, she seemed dwarfed by the pink cardigan that she was wearing. Flowers were sewn onto it. They were pretty tulips and daisies and roses, which seemed an odd choice for a woman that seemed so severe.

  
  


Her lips were drawn into a tight frown. Martin could’ve sworn that she was glaring down at him. Suddenly, he wished he wasn’t wearing bright splashes of red and blue and purple. Suddenly he wished he was wearing all black and could hide under the table and pretend to be a shadow. Deep lines were etched into her face, and Martin figured that she had to be at _least_ sixty years old. Maybe sixty-five.

  
  


“Jonathan,” she intoned, her eyes flicking over to the smaller boy. Ms. Robinson wore thick glasses that reminded Martin of the bottoms of soda bottles. They seemed to make her eyes much larger than they actually were. “Are you two boys talking about the Magnus House? I believe I told you to stop interrogating people about what happened.”

  
  


“I did that two years ago, Ms. Robinson,” Jon replied in a stubborn, petulant voice. His gaze was nevertheless dropped to the table as he scowled. Martin couldn’t imagine saying _anything_ so disrespectfully in front of her. As it was, his face was frozen and felt beet red. “Because the authorities _gave up the case._ They wouldn’t _listen_ to me. _”_

  
  


“Pish. Curiosity killed the cat, you know.”

  
  


“And satisfaction brought it back. I learned the other half of that phrase.” Jubilant, Jon jerked his chin up to stare at the old woman. Martin kicked his leg under the table and struck Jon’s calf. _You’re going to get us into trouble, please please stop._ “Ow.”

  
  


“Sorry,” Martin whispered.

  
  


Ms. Robinson heaved a great sigh. The rest of her cardigan seemed to move with her. Her glasses were connected by a great beaded chain that ran around her neck. “I don’t know _what_ it will take for you children to believe that nothing happened to Emma, Fiona, and Michael. I’d like to find the person that made up that _ridiculous_ story.”

  
  


Jon’s frown matched Ms. Robinson’s. Martin didn’t know _where_ Jon had gotten the confidence to argue with An Adult. “Then where are they?” Jon gestured with a wide, sweeping arm towards the library. “They haven’t been seen in town for _years,_ have they? They’ve _vanished.”_

  
  


_Vanished,_ Martin considered, was a nice word, too. Sort of sounded like _varnished._ Would the two rhyme for a poem? He would have to try it out later.

  
  


Ms. Robinson creaked out a laugh, as squeaky as old leather. “They haven’t _vanished,_ Jonathan. Emma moved to Brighton with her father, Fiona took up a job in London, and Michael went to art school. People leave, and sometimes, they simply don’t come back.”

  
  


Wow. Went to _London._ Like, permanently. That was something to consider. As it was, it sounded perfectly sensible to Martin. He certainly didn’t want to stay in this town forever, but he privately wasn’t sure what his mother would do without him. On second thought - maybe staying in the town wouldn’t be _dreadful._ He was used to it. And people (okay, one person, his mother) needed him here. And _here_ had Jon.

  
  


“That’s just what the adults _made up_ to stop us from asking questions. They do that _all the time.”_ Jon’s voice had verged into outright accusatory. He was leaning against the table, now, the edge of it digging into his chest. “I just want to know the truth.”

  
  


Ms. Robinson sighed hard, pressing her fingers to her forehead. Martin recognized that gesture. He’d seen his mother do it a lot. “Lord help me,” she muttered, and turned to walk away. “I’m afraid I have larger things to deal with than convince you that _they’re not dead_ and _ghosts aren’t real._ _”_

  
  


“Like the stolen books?”

  
  


The elderly librarian only gave them a solemn nod. _Oh._ Martin looked back towards the crime scene tape that’d been stretched over one door. Stolen books? He hadn’t heard of any stolen books, but he didn’t really hear things like that. Jon seemed to know everything that existed in the world – _and,_ most importantly, everything that had ever happened in the town. Wow.

  
  


“What happened, Ms. Robinson?” Changing his demeanor considerably, Jon was all wide eyes and innocent questions. He even leaned back in his chair and folded his hands in front of him. “It’s a _calamity.”_

  
  


Again, Ms. Robinson could only eke out a sigh at first. Martin liked that word, too. _Calamity._ It would make for a very pretty girl’s name, though seemed very dramatic for the theft of a couple of books. Martin wasn’t sure why someone would steal books from the library – you could check them out for free with a library card. Unless the thief’s mother wouldn’t let them get a library card.

  
  


“I suppose you’ll be finding it out one way or another, and I’d rather you not harass library patrons.”

  
  


Jon’s gaze didn’t change, but he saw the beginning of a smile start to grow on the side of his face. _Yes, I will certainly be harassing library patrons if I don’t get my way,_ they seemed to say.

  
  


“There isn’t much to tell, if you must know. The library was closed a few days for renovations.”

  
  


Martin wanted to help this questioning. Even if he was a little intimidated by Mrs. Robinson, Jon might very well like him more if he – _no,_ he wasn’t doing this so Jon would _like_ him. Definitely not. That would be silly and a little pathetic. Maybe he was just curious about stolen books, too. Yes, that was it.

  
  


“What kind of renovations?”

  
  


Mrs. Robinson’s mottled gaze shifted over to him, and Martin shifted uncomfortably in his chair. _She knows when you are sleeping, she knows when you’re awake_ played in his mind rather against his will. “Worms ate up the foundation of the library,” she explained curtly.

Martin didn’t know worms ate library foundations. Neither did Jon, for that matter, given his discreet glance downward like he expected the library to eat them up at any moment. “When I returned,” Ms. Robinson continued, “The rare artifacts collection had been positively ransacked.”

  
  


“Aren’t there any cameras?” That was Jon again, his question as urgent and clear as an arrow.

  
  


With the ghost of a smirk flickering over her lips, Ms. Robinson’s face turned to Jonathan again. “I know _everything_ that happens in my library.”

  
  


“I mean.” An impetuous shrug of his shoulders had Martin trying to kick Jon’s leg again, though this time he was met with only empty air. Jon was sitting cross-legged. “Clearly not.”

  
  


The old woman did nothing short of scowl. Her hands went to the book cart that she had been pushing along. It was full of books that Martin thought to be rather heavy, and the handle for the cart reached only about to her breastbone, but she didn’t seem to be struggling in the slightest. The idea of muscles bulging underneath her cardigan had Martin giggling, which Ms. Robinson – probably rightfully – took as disrespect.

  
  


“ _Behave yourself,_ you two, or I’ll set Jonah Magnus on you.” An ominous warning, and then she was off pushing the cart back to the mysterious adult section of the library. Jon scoffed as soon as she was out of earshot.

  
  


Jon really didn’t seem too frightened by her, so Martin didn’t think it appropriate to voice the only thought racing through his head – _she’s a bit scary, isn’t she?_ Thankfully, Jon filled in the gaps. “I bet they didn’t even dust for fingerprints,” he muttered under his breath. “ _Or_ look for DNA.”

  
  


“Yeah. Real amateurs,” Martin agreed brightly. _Definitely what I would’ve done. Looked for fingerprints. DNA. Rightfully so._ “Who do you think took them?” Jon, who seemed to know a hint of everything, surely knew the identities and secrets of everybody in town. He’d probably had the mysteries solved already.

  
  


This made Jon consider. “Someone with a car,” he eventually concluded. “They’ve got to be transported to the black market. The books.”

  
  


“The black market?”

  
  


“’s like a big, uh, marketplace. Where they sell stolen bits and bobs. You can buy a baby for fifty quid.”

  
  


“That seems really low for a _baby.”_ Babies were meant to be awfully precious things, weren’t they? Then again, babies grew into twelve-year-olds, and Martin was rather unimpressed with most of _those._ Jon was one of the few exceptions. “But you think the books are being sold at this big marketplace? Where is it?”

  
  


Jon seemed to consider this curiously, before another figure approached the table – thankfully, not Ms. Robinson again (Martin had to briefly wonder whether it was legal to discuss illegal things like a black market, but the priest discussed all sorts of illegal things during the sermon when his mother dragged him to church, and nothing illegal ever happened in a church). No, Martin recognized this as one Georgie Barker, who tapped on the table to get Jon’s attention. “You have my lip balm,” she announced, before her eyes flicked over to Jon’s companion. “Hi.”

  
  


“Hi,” Martin whispered.

  
  


“Oh! Right, yes, sorry, I do. Hang on.” Jon dug into his backpack in the chair next to him, unzipping the small pocket on the front. Without zipping it back up, he returned the tube of lip balm to Georgie. “Uh, this is Martin.”

  
  


“Hi,” Martin whispered again, even softer. His gaze was firmly fixed on the table.

  
  


“Hi, Martin. We’re in English together.”

  
  


They were. Martin sat towards the back, but Georgie’s charm bracelet always jingled really loudly when she passed papers back to him. His eyes had always been drawn to it. It was quite pretty, really, and Martin had always wanted to open his mouth to talk to her about her interests – as signified by the charm bracelet charms – but had never _quite_ gotten up the nerve. Georgie’s attention returned quickly to Jon.

  
  


“I’ve got a proposition for you,” she announced with almost businesslike professionalism. Martin’s gaze drifted across the table to Jon’s open backpack, where he saw something glittering.

  
  


Weird. He had no idea why Jon had what looked like a gold nugget – and, hang on, was that a _wedding ring?_ Martin blinked a few times to himself. No, he _knew_ that twelve-year-olds couldn’t get married. Had Jon stolen it from somewhere? No, Jon wouldn’t do _that,_ that would be monstrous.

  
  


Thankfully, his attention was snapped by the absolutely _absurd_ statement that came out of Georgie’s mouth next: “Melanie and I are going to go explore the Magnus House for ghosts.”

  
  


Jon’s jaw hit the floor first, followed quickly by Martin’s. “You’ve gone _mad,”_ he accused.

  
  


“We’re trying to prove the existence of ghosts or not. It’s the biggest ghost story around here. It only makes sense.”

  
  


“It’s a decrepit old place! It’s in the middle of a lake!”

  
  


“We’re going to be careful. And Mr. Lukas ferries people in his boat all the time.”

  
  


“Your parents are going to be _furious_ – “

  
  


“They’re not going to know.” And there, Georgie’s eyes flashed in a way that signified Jon _certainly_ wasn’t going to be the one to tell them. “And we wanted you to come with us.”

  
  


_Jon,_ going to a dangerous old house that possibly had an evil fire lying in wait? Oh, no. No, no, Martin didn’t want _that_ to happen. To his delight, Jon snorted loud and answered flatly: “No.”

  
  


Georgie wrinkled her nose and moved to rest her hands on her hips. Her eyes seemed to drill into Jon from above her glasses. “You never want to do anything.”

  
  


A smug answer: “Yes, that’s correct.”

  
  


“Look, it’s _okay_ if you don’t want to go because you’re scared of ghosts –“

  
  


_That_ riled Jon considerably. He sat straighter in his chair, folding his hands together in a determined expression. He returned Georgie’s intense glare to such a degree that Martin felt like he was fading into the background. “ _Ghosts aren’t real._ I can’t be scared of them.”

  
  


“You just said _no_ really, really quickly for someone who’s absolutely, totally, never been afraid of ghosts.”

  
  


“It’s – it’s – the Magnus House is falling down! It’s _old!_ There’s probably _termites._ Spiders.”

  
  


There, Georgie withdrew a pamphlet from her jacket and threw it down on the table. Martin looked at it curiously – oh. A brief history of the town. He wished he’d gotten _that_ when he moved here; he saw a little map on the back. “Read it. The library was built the same year that the Magnus House was built. And you’re here _all_ the time. Just admit that you’re scared, Jon.”

  
  


“ _I’m not scared!”_

  
  


And then, Georgie threw down the final gauntlet: “Prove it.”

  
  


Martin knew Jon’s answer before he even spoke. There was no other way to retain his dignity, was there? And Jon looked riled up enough that he would’ve agreed to build a tower to the _moon_ if it would prove matters to Georgie. So, when Jon stuck his head back and jutted his chin in the air, Martin wasn’t surprised to hear him say: “Fine. I’ll go.” And then, an addendum: “ _But only to prove that ghosts aren’t real.”_

  
  


While Martin had been somewhat hesitant on his belief of ghosts, that didn’t stop a bolt of fear from striking him at the thought of Jon putting himself in danger. He remembered that evening on the path, seeing Jon clutching his burned arm (he could see the shiny mark even now, and it made him so _mad)_ and looking around at his scattered books like he wanted to cry. What if the fire got him there? What if he got hurt by the thousand-and-other dangers that existed in a haunted house? What if ghosts were real and decided they really, really didn’t like Jon?

  
  


Martin didn’t know what he would do _if_ Jon was in danger. It wasn’t like he’d stopped Jon from being bullied in the first place. And he had no power against an angry ghost – especially an angry teenage ghost. But still, Martin was leaning against the table and blurting out: “I’ll go, too.”

  
  


Georgie and Jon’s heads whipped around to stare at Martin curiously. Not for the first time, Martin felt like an interloper. “I’ve … always been interested in ghosts,” he lied. He reached forward and tapped his finger on the textbook. “Parapsychology. And, um, stuff like that. So. It’ll be interesting and go see what it’s like. For real.” He looked over at Jon. “Not that it will be. Real, I mean.”

  
  


Jon looked _delighted_ in that instant, and Martin couldn’t bring himself to regret a thing. Couldn’t bring himself to regret offering to do a very, very frightening thing indeed. “Fantastic, Martin.” Jon’s looked up at Georgie. “It’ll be the _skeptics_ versus _charlatans.”_

  
  


Both, Martin considered, were very good words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another update for the week, see you all next week! I like to think every character in this piece is a nightmare tween in their own way. Thanks all for reading!


	6. In Trouble

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: None

Georgie didn’t really realize that she was in trouble when she was pulled out of class. After all, Georgie didn’t much _get_ in trouble. Not necessarily the teacher’s pet, really, but also not one for dramatic or rebellious outbursts. It all just seemed so _silly_ to Georgie, even then. Then again – she was only twelve years old, and perhaps fifteen and sixteen year olds had plenty more to be angry about. Seemed like it, anyway. Georgie’s older brother smelled bad almost constantly, and Georgie supposed she’d be plenty upset if that happened to her, too.

  
  


Ms. Rosie, the front desk woman, had been the one to pull her out. She hadn’t precisely been a font of information as she was led down the main hallway of the school. It seemed eerily quiet with all the students in class. All she could hear was the insistent clack-clack-clack of Ms. Rosie’s heels on the tile floor and the shuffling scuffle of her own shoes. Bizzare.

  
  


Wasn’t a surprise doctor’s appointment, because Ms. Rosie had told her to not bring her things. And then they turned a corner, and Georgie saw Melanie sitting outside the headmaster’s office. _Sitting_ wasn’t perhaps the appropriate word – it was more like _sulking._

  
  


Oh, _no._

  
  


While Georgie didn’t get in trouble, Melanie certainly did. With nearly every figure of authority she ran into. And Georgie had read plenty of crime stories, enough to understand the general premise beyond _guilt by association._ Her heart dropped into her stomach as Ms. Rosie cheerfully led Georgie to the empty chair beside her girlfriend. She said that Mr. Bouchard would be free to see them shortly.

  
  


As soon as the headmaster’s door clicked behind her, Georgie whipped around in her chair. “What did you _do,”_ she accused in a whisper. Even if the hallway was empty, she didn’t want to risk Mr. Bouchard hearing them beyond the thin walls.

  
  


Melanie held both hands up in a surrendering gesture. “I haven’t done – “ _That_ sentence was met with a disbelieving scoff. “ _I haven’t done anything that involves you, anyway!”_

  
  


_This_ was an unexpected side effect of being Melanie King’s girlfriend, and Georgie didn’t think she liked it all that much.

  
  


“Well, there’s got to be something, we’ve _both_ been pulled.” Georgie’s shoulders slumped against her chair; she looked at the ceiling. She tried to desperately think of what could’ve happened that would’ve led to something like _this._ Well, she had been late to Geometry the other week because Melanie had been so keen to show her some dark purple lip gloss in the bathroom (late, of course, because it had to be wiped off before Melanie returned to class, and they had realized with a shock that it was not so easily wiped off, and Georgie still privately thought that it was not lip gloss at all but some kind of sparkly glue). But certainly that wasn’t enough to call for a visit by _Mr. Bouchard,_ the head teacher. At least – if it was – Georgie would _die._

  
  


“Do you think they found out about me piercing your eyebrow?” She tried again, weakly.

  
  


Melanie seemed to think on this by a moment. Georgie had a rustle of fabric and realized that Melanie was mimicking her posture – shoulders back, staring at the ceiling thoughtfully. Her hands folded carefully in her lap. “I mean. Noooo?” She murmured, unconvinced by her own speech. “It’s not like I’ve went around telling people, but I’ve also – you know. Not been _lying_ to people about it, if they ask where I got it from. It’s not _illegal.”_

  
  


Georgie paused thoughtfully. Not like she could fault Melanie for _that._ “D’you think that counts as assault?” To Melanie’s confused silence, Georgie clarified: “There was a bit of blood. Heard that if you make someone bleed, it’s assault. Think there was a law, I dunno, back in the Dark Ages maybe.”

  
  


“But I asked you to do it.”

  
  


“I dunno, plenty of people _ask_ to have a needle poked through them, they just don’t _say_ it.” Jon, for instance, asked to have sharp objects poked through him all the time, mostly with his eyes.

  
  


Melanie snorted beside her, and Georgie felt somewhat cheered by it. She glanced over to see that Melanie was carefully removing the piercing from her eyebrow (accompanied by a few winces). “What’re you doing?”

  
  


“Removing the evidence, hang on.” Soon, the piercing was put into her pocket, and Melanie turned to look at her. “Can you see anything?”

  
  


With Melanie’s eyes open, Georgie really _couldn’t._ The piercing had made two little holes around Melanie’s eyebrow (where, Georgie remembered with a faint prickling of skin, the needle had gone _in_ and the needle had gone _out)._ The upper hole was mostly concealed by the dark hair of Melanie’s eyebrow, and the lower hole was practically invisible with Melanie’s hooded eyelids. “Um, just don’t blink and you should be fine.”

  
  


“ _Yeah,_ don’t blink. I just won’t blink. They can’t make me blink, anyhow,” Melanie murmured to herself like a mantra, before raising her voice to be heard by her girlfriend. “If it _isn’t_ about the eyebrow thing – which, by the way, it shouldn’t be, because it’s not like eyebrow piercings are illegal for kids, anyway , I don’t care if there was blood or not – er, can you – I mean.”

  
  


Georgie raised her head from the back of the chair to look at her girlfriend curiously. She looked frustrated with herself.

  
  


“Well, just play dumb, won’t you? You’re _not_ dumb,” Melanie clarified, “But clearly – whatever it is, it’s my fault. Right? Since you don’t know anything about why we’re here.”

  
  


“ _You_ don’t know why we’re here, either.”

  
  


“Yeah, but _I_ have a running list of why I could be. You, you know, you don’t do anything, so.” Melanie huffed out a breath. “It’s not a lie. Just, whatever it is in the world, let me take the blame for it, okay? I don’t want you getting in trouble. _I’m_ the one who gets in trouble.”

  
  


Confusion filled Georgie for a moment as she looked at her – before it dissipated in understanding, replaced by a burst of warmth and fondness. Melanie looked agitated, almost _itchy,_ but nevertheless seemed intent on taking the fall for whatever it was.

  
  


Georgie’s lips broke into a smile and she reached over to take Melanie’s hand, her fingers sliding around Melanie’s paler ones, and she opened her mouth to say – _what,_ exactly? Not to worry about that? To at least hear what they’d been accused of first? That Georgie felt really very lucky to be her girlfriend, and that Melanie was the absolute _best_ person in the world, that she couldn’t find a better partner in crime?

  
  


The head teacher’s door opened before Georgie got a chance to say anything. “He’s ready to see you two girls,” Miss Rosie informed them, and Georgie felt a giant cavern open up in her stomach. She wondered what would happen if she just said no. Ran out the front door and lived in the forest forever. Melanie could join her. They’d be like the Amazons.

  
  


Melanie stood up first, dropping Georgie’s hand. It was almost like watching a garage door shut – Melanie’s face, before open and vulnerable, now seemed to be made of stone. She tilted her head up fractionally and walked into the open door. Feeling much less confident than that, Georgie followed in after her. They walked through a suffocatingly narrow hallway before entering the headmaster’s office proper.

  
  


Georgie had _seen_ Mr. Bouchard before, of course. The head teacher usually spoke to them at the beginning of the year, and he was nearly impossible to miss in the hallways – not necessarily because any of his physical features (most of the older teenagers, certainly most of the boys, were taller than him), but because of how Mr. Bouchard held himself.

  
  


Invariably, Mr. Bouchard wore a suit to school. On special days, his plain tie was replaced by a patterned bowtie. Georgie wondered if he thought it made him seem more approachable . It really didn’t, if only because Mr. Bouchard’s face remained the same no matter what was around his neck.

  
  


His hazel eyes always seemed to regard people with a laser focus – Georgie noticed, now, that the whites of his eyes seemed to be irritated red – and his pencil mustache seemed the best indicator of emotion on his face. Right now, his lips were pressed together, the ends of his mustache pointed down at the floor.

  
  


“Miss Barker and Miss King,” he spoke formally, gesturing to two padded seats in front of the desk. “Sit.” No room for argument.

  
  


The forest seemed a fine substitute, actually, Georgie didn’t mind taking up a bow and arrow. Melanie walked forward first, taking the seat closest to the door and Georgie soon followed.

  
  


She hadn’t actually ever been in here before. She was surprised by how … _posh_ it seemed, really. There were thick wooden bookcases nearly encircling the room. Most of the shelves had, accordingly, fabric-bound books pointing out from them. Encyclopedias and records and the like, from what Georgie could see. Some of the shelves were cleared and instead displayed with knick-knacks.

  
  


There were some pictures – mostly of Mr. Bouchard and various figures that Georgie didn’t recognize. Oh, she did recognize that one – that was Mr. Lukas. She hadn’t quite realize how much Mr. Lukas had dwarfed Mr. Bouchard before, but in the picture, with his arm around the head teacher (gross), it seemed like Mr. Lukas could easily lean the wrong way and push him over.

  
  


Oh, and there was a skull. Georgie blinked at it – it sat on a shelf on just about her eye-level. _That’s what happens to kids who try to run,_ Georgie felt herself thinking against her will, and a shiver crossed over her shoulders. _What kind of a man keeps a whole human skull in his office? Isn’t that weird?_ She looked over at the chair next to her, trying to meet Melanie’s eyes. _Melanie. Melanie. Human skull._ _Look._ If there was ever a time where she wished she could beam thoughts directly into her head, this was it.

  
  


Melanie’s eyes were instead fixed to the head teacher, and Georgie noticed that she was indeed trying hard not to blink. “Mr. Bouchard, why are we here?” Melanie asked after a few moments of silence had passed between them. “I was taken out of Geometry for this.” A beat. “I’m not doing very well in Geometry. I probably ought to spend as much time there as I can.”

  
  


Mr. Bouchard’s lips softened into a thoughtful sort of smile, his pencil moustache curling. It looked like the sort of mustache that Jon was trying to grow (if one could call the thing growing on Jon’s upper lip a mustache and not a random collection of quasi-hairs). “I’m aware, Miss King, and I’ll try not to make this too long. Very well?” He placed both palms together in a prayer-position and rested his chin on the very top. “I’ve only heard a very … _concerning_ rumour concerning you two girls.”

  
  


A shiver passed up Georgie’s spine. _Creepy._ She didn’t like being called a girl, certainly not by a grown man. Nobody ever said _girl_ in a nice way.

  
  


Melanie’s chin jutted up. “I didn’t know head teachers listened to rumors by schoolkids.”

  
  


“Only when a teacher brings it to my attention.” Mr. Bouchard took a large breath, and continued, his eyes sliding between the two of them. “I’ve heard, Ms. Barker, that you were discussing with a Mr. Blackwood during your English class about a future visit to the Magnus House.”

  
  


_Oh._ Georgie shared a look with Melanie. _This,_ Georgie felt, was sufficiently outside of a head teacher’s purview. Or perhaps – well, child safety was probably one of his concerns, wasn’t it? Then again, staring at Mr. Bouchard, with his chin resting on top of his hands like that, watching them – _watching_ them – Georgie had a vivid mental image of falling in the supposed hole to the center of the Earth in the Magnus House with Mr. Bouchard just watching, watching, watching from the top of it. She couldn’t suppress a shudder.

  
  


“And, given your history, Ms. King, it doesn’t take much imagination to wonder where she might’ve come up with the idea.” Mr. Bouchard set a hand on a manila folder on his desk. His desk was organized in a way that would please any mathematician – stapler, tape, pencil holder set neatly in one corner. A stack of files rested right in the center. Georgie could see, even from here and even from behind her glasses, that the top file had Melanie’s name on it. “Haven’t we had a prior discussion about roping in _good_ students to your little schemes?”

  
  


Beside her, Melanie scowled and dropped her gaze to the floor. Her feet didn’t quite reach the floor, and she kicked them back and forth irritably. Georgie remembered what Melanie said – about her taking the fall – but in the moment, the phrase _good students_ had been engraved on her mind and Georgie got _indignant._

  
  


“It was my idea, Mr. Bouchard,” Georgie blurted out, sitting up straight in the chair. It was _true,_ anyway, which meant that it was the _right_ thing to say. “I wanted to investigate the Magnus House to see if it was true what people said. About the ghosts.” Elias’ eyes shifted, slow and languid, over to her. Georgie was reminded of an alligator – Jon had gone _on_ and on about the differences between alligators and crocodiles and some things that probably weren’t even actual animals that existed. She was reminded of the illustration of an alligator (or perhaps a crocodile) with its snout just barely above the water, its beady eyes waiting for the right time to snap. “Of the dead teenagers,” she added for clarification.

  
  


“That’s not – that’s not _true,_ Mr. Bouchard.” Melanie snapped to attention and scooted forward on the chair so quickly that her shoes thunked against the floor. “It was my idea. I knew I couldn’t carry the equipment alone, so I got my girlfriend to come and help me with it. It’s _my_ fault.”

  
  


“No, it’s not, it’s – Mr. Bouchard, she’s just lying because she doesn’t want me to get in trouble,” Georgie insisted. “But it really was my idea, I thought we ought to investigate the most haunted place in town and – “

  
  


“No, it wasn’t, it was _my_ idea, and I would’ve gone alone if -”

  
  


“ _Enough.”_

  
  


Mr. Bouchard had raised his head from his hands to hold one up, palm out, to them. Both girls immediately fell silent, and Georgie felt her heart thump erratically in her chest. _We’ve not done anything wrong,_ Georgie told herself. _Just planning it isn’t wrong. Besides, he’s the head teacher, he isn’t anything big and important._

  
  


And yet, in Georgie’s life, the head teacher did feel quite big and important indeed, capable of making her continued existence at school quite miserable if necessary. It didn’t help that the head teacher was Mr. Bouchard.

  
  


Mr. Bouchard who, according to her parents, had his fingers in nearly everything at the small town. Every organizational subcommittee, every planning group, even most _book clubs_ boasted one Elias Bouchard as a member. He had been in this town for a very long time, after all, and was more wealthy than a head teacher salary would really allow for. Inside of his school, it was likely that one of Elias Bouchard’s eyes (whether the ones in his skull or the ones he hired) was on you. Outside of the school, it was hard to shake the feeling.

  
  


“You girls do realize that what you’re planning is illegal, correct?” Mr. Bouchard asked, tilting his head to the side curiously. “While nobody currently occupies the house, the land is still owned by the Magnus family.” _But the Magnus family is dead, Mr. Bouchard._ “Which would qualify that as trespassing. _Breaking and entering,_ even.” The head teacher tutted to himself, shaking his head back and forth. “Quite a serious crime.”

  
  


Georgie hadn’t really considered that, and she faltered for a moment. Breaking and entering was a crime that seemed rather … adult, didn’t it? Banging the door open to an antiquated old house didn’t seem like it was all that serious. It’s not like anyone would mind, not really.

  
  


“Of course, I’m not here to lecture you about your proposed criminal behaviors. Or, Ms. King, for your continued criminal behaviors. My concern _really_ lies for your safety.”

  
  


Melanie let out a scoff, and Georgie shot a look at her. _Don’t make this worse._

  
  


“After all, just as you said – the three children who were killed there?” Mr. Bouchard made another low tutting noise, though this one was softer and considerably sadder. His silly little pencil mustache pointed at the floor. Georgie had heard adults make the same noise before. _Such a shame. If only they weren’t stupid, stupid children._ “It’s clearly a very dangerous property. Not the place for young women such as yourself.”

  
  


Georgie had come to dislike being called a young woman. Nobody ever meant young woman in a _nice_ way, similar to being called a _girl_. It was either a rebuke – _Ms. Barker, you’re a young woman, please start acting like it, you can’t sit like that in a skirt –_ or a remark one would make to a doll – _oh, you’re so grown up, sitting there like a grown woman!_ Georgie would take being called _girl_ (which, she was, and it annoyed her, but she didn’t bristle at being called it the way Jon bristled at being called _boy)_ a thousand times over one _nice young woman._

  
  


Here, it was no better. Georgie imagined a woman from Victorian England in thick petticoats and hoop skirts stepping over the dilapidated wood of an old mansion. _Perhaps I’ll find a rich old husband in the Magnus House, so that he may provide for me for the rest of my days!_

  
  


He drew his hands apart and held them up in a plaintive gesture. “Really, Ms. Barker, Ms. King, I wouldn’t be able to bear it if any one of my students got hurt. I was just a young head teacher when those poor, sweet ones went missing.”

  
  


“That must’ve been a long time ago.”

  
  


A corner of Mr. Bouchard’s lips turned up, but it wasn’t a smile. There were two symmetrical touches of gray at his temples; similar threads ran through his styled hair. Of course Georgie logically knew that there was product in it, but under the incandescent lights of his office, it just looked greasy. “Indeed. And how _graphic._ How much pain they must’ve been in. To think, it could all have been avoided if they had just avoided the Magnus House.”

  
  


Georgie tried not to think of the pain. She had heard the ghost stories surrounding it – of course, they all had. And – well, she supposed the things that had killed those teenagers was still there, wasn’t it? If the original ghost – Jonah Magnus – had done them in, ghosts didn’t really _go away._ Unless they found peace. It didn’t seem like Jonah Magnus was a particularly peaceful man.

  
  


“ _Eugh.”_ A shiver passed through their head teacher. “No more of that. Just give me your word that you two won’t be visiting the Magnus House, would you? And nothing more would come of it.” There, Mr. Bouchard did smile, as if they shared a secret between them. “I promise. No punishment.”

  
  


She spared a glance towards Melanie, who returned it. Of course, even without speaking, there was only one logical answer they could give. Georgie was not a habitual liar, but old enough to realize that sometimes the truth was the worst answer to give. “We won’t,” they both said, synchronized.

  
  


“Very good, very good. I knew my faith in you two wasn’t misplaced. You may return to class. Oh – take a sweet from the jar on my desk.”

  
  


Georgie stood up first and reached for the small jar full of brightly colored wrappers sitting just at the corner of his desk. Melanie did the same (taking more than one, Georgie saw, and privately wished that she had done the same) as they shuffled through the narrow hallway back towards the school at large. Mr. Bouchard’s office door shut slowly behind them with a _click!_

  
  


“Oh _god,”_ Georgie muttered to herself when they stepped out of the front office. Melanie stuck the candy in her mouth and nodded at her sympathetically. “That was _terrible._ I _hate_ Mr. Bouchard’s office. I hate _him._ What’s that _skull_ all about?”

  
  


“You get used to it, you really do.”

  
  


“I can’t believe he brought us in for _that._ Honestly. English’ll be over by now.” Georgie unwrapped the sweet and popped it in her mouth and turned towards her girlfriend. Melanie was regarding her curiously, like Georgie was an alien that had just crawled out of a swamp. “What?”

  
  


“I mean –” Melanie gestured her hand towards the office erratically. “Does that- are we – do we need to change our plans?”

  
  


_Oh._

  
  


As strange as it seemed, Georgie hadn’t even considered it. She had just wanted to end that meeting with fuddy-duddy old Mr. Bouchard as soon as possible, and hadn’t really taken what he’d said to heart. Then again, the danger was very real that if they did go to the Magnus House and Mr. Bouchard found out – they’d get in _so_ much trouble. And, obviously, if they went to the Magnus House and were horrifically killed, that would also be deeply unpleasant, though debatably as unpleasant as meeting with Mr. Bouchard again.

  
  


Then again.

  
  


She remembered Mr. Bouchard’s face as he requested them not to go to the Magnus House. She remembered his face as he called them _young women._ It was the face of a man who had control over everything in his life, including the hundred or so students in his school. The face of a man who had never been surprised in his life. And it _grated_ at her. Georgie knew, even conceptually, that that was childish – contrariness for the sake of contrariness was something _little,_ little kids did.

  
  


But she also really, _really_ did not like the head teacher, so perhaps an exception could be given. Perhaps sometimes children rebelled for a very good reason indeed.

  
  


“Well.” Georgie offered, putting a hand on her hip. “We’re, like, experts, right? We’re not like those teenagers that got killed. We’re _practically_ ghost hunters. And we’re making a plan. And – besides, there’s probably so many ghosts in that old house Mr. Magnus wouldn’t even know we were there.” She trilled her lips and stared down the hallway. Perhaps she was acting braver than she felt about it.

  
  


But – then again – if she canceled the whole thing, Georgie knew it would eat at her. Every day. She’d want to hide under the table every time she saw Mr. Bouchard again. For the rest of her _life._ No, in that sense, there was only real solution, wasn’t there? If she wanted to live with herself.

  
  


“We’re going to have to go sooner than we thought,” Georgie finally amended. “Otherwise, Mr. Bouchard is going to catch word that we didn’t actually cancel it, and – “

  
  


_Oh!_

  
  


Melanie had just practically thrown herself at her. Both arms fell around her neck and squeezed tightly. Sometimes Melanie just got so full of feeling that it came out as a hug. Georgie stumbled backward and laughed, feeling the stress of the meeting start to leak out of her ears and onto the floor. “You’re the _best,”_ Melanie insisted against Georgie’s shoulder. Melanie’s hair, Georgie noted, smelled like wildflowers and honey. It was very nice. “You’re the _best,_ Georgie Barker, you’re an absolute _queen_ of a person, I swear.”

  
  


Any misgivings that Georgie had flitted away immediately as she hugged her back, her charms from her bracelet clinking against the few dozen clips that Melanie had attached to her bag. “ _Psh._ This wouldn’t be happening without you,” Georgie muttered back, her face growing hot.

  
  


Suddenly, the classrooms started to vomit out their students and the hallways started to fill. Melanie was not letting go, and the students started to part ways around them. It felt like a nice little bubble of coziness, but – “We should probably get to class?” Georgie asked, and Melanie withdrew. “I’ve got to tell Martin about us moving it up. Can you get Jon? He – if he’s not in class, he _might_ be skipping it in the library, but pretty sure his grandmother threatened to make him live there if he got caught skipping class again.”

  
  


Melanie was beaming at her brightly. “Of course. And after school – we’ll make sure we have everything?”

  
  


“You’ve got it.” Georgie returned her smile. “Bye, Mel.”

  
  


Georgie walked back to English class in a daze. If there had been any misgivings about their venture, they had dissipated entirely by Melanie’s reaction. Maybe that wasn’t the most sensible way to go about things, but it felt right, so surely it couldn’t be the _worst_ decision in the world, would it? She was walking on clouds. They would be fine. It was just some dumb old house that maybe had a few ghosts in it, but they would be smarter than the teenagers had been.

  
  


She had almost walked right into the classroom without seeing Martin Blackwood posted by the door like some sort of sentry. He was holding her bag in his hands as if it were a bomb. Georgie felt a pinprick of guilt; he was probably getting glitter all over his hands. A dozen washings of the bag hadn’t been enough to remove all of the glitter encrusted on the surface of it, but her grandmother had given the bag to her, so what else was there to do but use it?

  
  


“Georgie!” He called warmly, handing the bag out to her. “Hi! Hope everything’s okay. Class ended and you still hadn’t come back, so I thought I’d hold onto your bag until the next class, but I wasn’t _actually_ sure where your next class was, so – hah.” His face had grown very red, obscuring some of the acne spread across his cheeks. Georgie took the bag from him and saw that her bag was actually _less_ striking than Martin’s shirt. Those were a lot of psychedelic fish. “Is everything okay?”

  
  


She threw the bag over her shoulder and looked Martin up and down. They had chatted a little more in English class since their meeting in the library, but even Georgie couldn’t say that she _knew_ the shy boy all that well. Still, Jon seemed to trust him, and Georgie trusted Jon, and so –

  
  


“Plans have changed,” she announced. Martin’s eyebrows knitted in confusion before he realized that Georgie was talking about the capital P Plan. “We’re leaving. _Tomorrow.”_


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: brief mention of thalassophobia

For their adventure, the weather could not have been better. The sun hung low in an unmarred sky. A breeze tickled between him and his friends, ruffling his hair. Jon heard the low, insistent hooting of an owl that had woken a few hours too early. It was not _night_ yet – and Jon did not want to think on it being night. How frightening it would be.

  
  


Four of them trudged on the path out of town through the forest with backpacks. Each of them, it seemed, had deigned to pack separately and Jon couldn’t help but feel outdone. He had brought his school bag, but the meager contents inside rattled around. He’d only thrown in a book and a water bottle. After a moment’s hesitation, Jon had thrown in a few band-aids for good measure and had been very proud of himself for thinking of it.

  
  


The others, it seemed, had a very different idea. Their backpacks all seemed full to bursting. Melanie and Georgie each had a camera bag additionally thrown over their shoulder – while Jon was certain that he wouldn’t be needing any of _that,_ he couldn’t help but wonder what on Earth they had thought to bring to their little haunt jaunt.

  
  


He sidled up beside Martin on the path. Martin, as he always did, slowed his pace and ducked his head to look at him. Jon liked that. If puberty was going to go ahead and strike Martin early, causing him to practically tower over him, then the least Martin could do was duck. “What did you bring in your bag?” He whispered, low enough for the girls not to hear.

  
  


“Oh!” Martin swung his backpack around to his front and zipped it open. “Not much. A torch – I brought an extra, in case you needed one. A first-aid kit in case anybody gets hurt. It has burn cream in it. Um, some water bottles, some snacks in case we get tired, a map of the town, a blanket in case we get cold, er, a knife?” He paused a minute and withdrew a blunt butter knife from his bag.

  
  


Jon was stupefied. “Why did you bring a _knife!?”_

  
  


“I don’t know!” Martin flustered, immediately dropping back into the depths of his bag. “I just – we might need it, you know! Could be dangerous!”

  
  


“What are you going to do, stab ghosts?”

  
  


“I – I mean, has anyone ever _tried!?”_

  
  


Jon scoffed a little, speeding up his pace in front of Martin. Martin bringing a knife rattled him a little. He didn’t like thinking of this as dangerous – though, then again, it was naive to think that an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere _wouldn’t_ be some sort of dangerous. Perhaps he could pick up a stick there to defend himself with, if it came to it, or he could just stick close to Martin.

  
  


He bet none of the others had brought a book, anyway.

  
  


The lake rose before them. With the sun setting and sending its rays up over the water, Jon could see that it wasn’t as perfectly still as it appeared. Little divots and streaks of white betrayed its movement. Jon tried to remember the depth of the lake, and couldn’t – it seemed, very well, like it might go down forever. Down and down and down and who _knew_ was at the bottom. Was it really so outlandish to think it might be more than a few skeletons?

  
  


On the edge of the lake was Mr. Lukas’ shack and a small dock stretching out onto it. A few paddle boats were tied to it. Dwarfed by them was Mr. Lukas’ little speedboat. On days when nobody wanted to go onto the lake (which was often), it wasn’t uncommon to see Mr. Lukas dashing about the lake on his boat. It could be eerie sometimes, especially on foggy days.

  
  


Oh, they were going to have to go on the lake, wouldn’t they? On a paddleboat, no less. Jon could feel himself stiffen at the very thought of it. He could swim, of course he could, but – who was to say that nothing would grab him from the bottom of the water?

  
  


Hopefully they would paddle fast.

  
  


As they approached the shack (with ‘LUKAS FISHING AND ROW’ helpfully painted above it on a sign), it was not clear that anyone was in. The window in the shack was shuttered. Melanie and Georgie paused before it first, looking at the hours, and Melanie whispered a swear.

  
  


“It closed an hour ago,” Georgie translated for Jon and Martin, who shared a despairing glance.

  
  


They all shared silent looks for a moment. It was tempting enough, at least for Jon, to just turn about and head home. “Has anyone ever talked to Mr. Lukas? Could shout and see if he’s still in,” Melanie suggested.

  
  


They all fell silent.

  
  


Technically, Jon _had._ Some years ago, when his grandmother had tried to get him to do anything resembling physical activity, had taken him here. He’d been given a lesson about how to work a paddleboat, but it had all been far too strenuous for very little effort. Being on the thin plastic boat on top of the seemingly bottomless lake also seemed a minor affront to whatever deity controled such matters.

  
  


But that had been years ago, and it wasn’t like he’d talked with Mr. Lukas _long,_ so Jon kept his mouth well-shut. They all stared at one another before Jon saw something light up in Georgie’s eyes. To his horror, she crossed the circle over to Jon and clapped a hand on his shoulder. It turned to a hand on his back, and then she was pushing him. “You speak the best, Jon, _you_ do it.”

  
  


“No no no no no –” Jon immediately started to complain, but before he could help it, he was stumbling his way towards the door on the side of the shack. He did not want to _speak_ to Mr. Lukas, a practical – and eccentric – stranger. But Georgie’s push was relentless, and soon he found himself standing in front of the door.

  
  


Melanie crossed her arms and glared at him, a dare for him to run away. Jon let out a soft, pained groan and rose his hand. “Jon, I can – “ Martin broke in, but Jon’s knuckles were already rapping on the soft wood.

  
  


“Mr. Lukas?” Jon called out patiently and dropped his hands to his sides. “Could we speak for a moment, please?’

  
  


There was no response. Jon couldn’t believe his luck. Feeling more confident that certainly _nobody_ was home, Jon raised his hand again and knocked a little louder. “Mr. Lukas?”

  
  


It was almost as if Mr. Lukas had been waiting right by the door. Jon had heard no shuffle from deeper inside the shack, no sound of movement or scraping that would signify him as getting up. Just a quick _click!_ Of an unlocking door mechanism and the slow creaking of the wooden door.

  
  


Jon knew that it wasn’t sensible to think so – buildings were made with plans and sketches and blueprints and the like, he knew that, Georgie had wanted to be an architect for some time. And yet, with the way Mr. Lukas lingered in the door, it seemed like he’d simply stood there and they’d built the doorway around him. His shoulders just brushed against the width of the doorway, and the top of his head (not that Mr. Lukas had very tall hair, but rather that his forehead was so big that his gray curls clung to it like moss) brushed against the height of it.

  
  


To Jon (who had never brushed against the width or height of a doorframe in his life), this had the deleterious effect of making Mr. Lukas seem approximately eleven feet tall. Staring past him, Jon could have sworn that he saw _smoke_ billowing in the confines of the shack. No, it was whiter than that, more translucent: fog. Jon suppressed a shiver and pressed his hands to his shoulders.

  
  


Mr. Lukas, Jon decided, was not more friendly than Mr. Bouchard. Mr. Bouchard was unfriendly in the sense that he looked rather like a cat cornering a mouse in the corner. Mr. Lukas was unfriendly in the sense that he looked rather like a bear waiting for the perfect salmon to swim by.

  
  


He didn’t think that being the salmon was better than being the mouse.

  
  


“We’re closed,” Mr. Lukas rumbled from deep in his chest, staring down at Jon with bright gray eyes. Jon cast a furtive glance over to his friends - Melanie gave him a thumbs up.

  
  


Jon tried a line that he remembered hearing adults saying a lot. “Oh, it seems that the time has gotten away from me.” He squinted at the sunset across the lake before focusing his eyes back on the great gray man in front of him. “But we were wondering if we could borrow a paddleboat to go across the lake with?” Seeing the disbelief on Mr. Lukas’ face, Jon tried to puff his chest out and continued: “We’re on a scientific expedition to investigate the Magnus House.”

  
  


Mr. Lukas did not seem convinced. His fingers were holding the door tightly – in that position, there was nothing stopping him from slamming the door in Jon’s face. Tendrils of fog still leaked out behind him, spilling and curling out into the grass, and Jon couldn’t help but wonder what _that_ was all about.

  
  


“No,” Mr. Lukas answered simply.

  
  


Jon didn’t know what to do with that. It wasn’t often that he was met with such simplicity – usually an adult would try to _explain,_ or make excuses, or give him a lecture about how young children shouldn’t be on scary lakes at night. But Jon could only stare at him with wide, confused eyes – _no._ Well. Okay, then, thank you very much for your time, sorry to be a bother.

  
  


He heard the shuffle of sneakers behind him. “Mr. Lukas!”

  
  


Martin. Turning around, he saw Martin coming up behind him. “Your laces are untied,” Jon informed him instinctively, but Martin ignored him in favor of standing at his side.

  
  


It was clear that Mr. Lukas did not like Martin’s outfit for the day. While he had regarded Jon with a smooth sort of detachment, he regarded Martin like someone had placed a particularly offensive lamp in the room. He squinted to examine Martin’s shirt. There were little dancing penguins on it of all colors; some of the penguins had top hats, others nude. “Mr. Lukas,” Martin continued in a tone dripping with politeness, “Are you missing a wedding ring?”

  
  


Jon’s eyes flicked to Mr. Lukas’ fingers on the door. It was true – Mr. Lukas’ pale hand seemed even paler on a patch of his ring finger. Strange how a man who spent so much time on the ocean underneath the sun still looked almost paper-white, but then again, Jon supposed that a fog often clung to the surface of it, blocking out the sun.

  
  


“Yes,” he answered gruffly, taking his hand off the door and sticking it in his pocket. He looked disgruntled. “Though I don’t see what business it was of yours.”

  
  


“Well, we – we _also_ came to return the ring. I mean, we mostly came to return the ring, the paddleboat thing was just sort of an afterthought. Just going to grab it out of your bag, Jon,” Martin prattled on, sidestepping Jon to open the front pocket of his bag. Perplexed, Jon felt him rummage around back there before he withdrew the ring that they’d found from the archaeological investigation. “Is this it?”

  
  


It looked like just a random gold band to Jon – then again, it was _so_ nondescript that he supposed Mr. Lukas wouldn’t notice the difference. Still, he handed it over to Mr. Lukas who inspected it – even holding it up to the light – before slipping it onto his finger. And then, to Jon’s utter amazement, Mr. Lukas cracked a smile. He had teeth like gravestones and very, very chapped lips. The smile seemed too big for his face, like someone had drawn it on and failed to account that smiles didn’t naturally stretch from ear to ear.

  
  


“This is it. _Thank you,_ Elias was about to have my hide and I just couldn’t remember where I’d misplaced it – what’s your name, lad?”

  
  


“M-Martin. Martin Blackwood, sir.” he answered, a little more confidently on the second go of it. Jon was staring up at him in surprise. _Why was I the one pushed forward if you’re so good at talking to adults?_

  
  


“Martin. Hm. And why did you say you wanted to go to the island again?”

  
  


“It’s camping, actually.” The lie seemed to spill of Martin’s tongue easily, and he shifted his bag on his shoulder. “Thought it might be nice to sleep in the woods.”

  
  


_That_ captured Mr. Lukas much more than any notion of a scientific investigation. He raised his newly ringed hand and stroked his bushy gray beard, his eyes staring off into the middle distance. Jon rather thought that he would look natural smoking a pipe. The long navy blue coat he was wearing certainly made him _seem_ like a natural sea captain of yore. “Camping? All on your own out there?”

  
  


“Yes, sir.”

  
  


Throwing Mr.Lukas monosyllabic nature back at him. As far as Jon was concerned, Martin was committing witchcraft.

  
  


“Really? Well, might be good for you all. Kids of your generation – they’ve got no sense of what it’s like to be out in nature. You’re all nice and comfortable with your electric lighting and the technologies.” Mr. Lukas spoke _the technologies_ the same way someone might say _the plagues._ “Makes you more self-sufficient, being in the middle of nowhere on your own. No need to be coddled.”

  
  


The fog spilled further out of the shack, this time getting close enough to curl around Martin’s shoes. Jon tried to peer into the darkness to see what on Earth _that_ was all about, but found nothing. Mr. Lukas was simply blocking the door. “We thought it might be good to toughen us up,” Martin quipped.

  
  


Mr. Lukas stroked his beard further, and was silent for a good minute or so. Jon spared a glance towards Melanie and Georgie, who also regarded Martin with a sort of wonder. The only adult that Jon had ever naturally gotten along with had been Ms. Robinson, who treated him like an annoying gnat most days.

  
  


“ _Well –_ suppose it couldn’t hurt,” he finally offered out. “So long as you have it back by morning, or thereabouts. And don’t tip it over.”

  
  


“We would never, sir.”

  
  


“Alright, then. Favor for a favor. Wouldn’t want me owing you for finding my wedding ring – _hah!”_ Mr. Lukas and his tombstone teeth barked out a laugh as he shuffled into the darkness of the boating shack. Jon could hear another remark from the darkness: “Wouldn’t that be something.”

  
  


He and Martin both shared a furtive glance. Anything less than an explicit order for them to follow meant that Jon would be standing well outside that spooky shack door, thank you very much. Jon didn’t want to imagine what lay beyond it, where that fog was coming from. But, soon enough, Mr. Lukas returned with a key in his hand. “Here you are. Just make sure to tie it on the dock when you get there so it doesn’t float off. That’d _really_ put you poor mites in for a bad time.” He held the key out, and Jon reached up to grab it, but Mr. Lukas yanked it away at the last minute. “Hang on a second. Where’s the tent, if you lot are all camping?”

  
  


That, Martin didn’t seem to have an answer for. Another thing that adults said seeped into his mind, and Jon tilted his chin up defiantly. “We’re _roughing it,_ Mr. Lukas. We have bedrolls tucked into our bags.”

  
  


Mr. Lukas let out another delighted laugh at that, and then slapped a hand down on Jon’s shoulder. _Ow._ That stung. “That’s the spirit, isn’t it! Hope for you little biters after all. Honestly, all of you little mites should be told to spend a night in the woods every now and then – puts hair on your chest.” Although Mr. Lukas couldn’t see Martin from where he was standing, Jon caught sight of Martin’s faintly quizzical, faintly horrified look.

  
  


“I’ve already got hair on my chest.” Jon couldn’t resist the urge to correct him. “Nine of them, actually.”

  
  


Now, Martin mouthed at him: _Hair? On your chest?_ Jon avoided the question and instead looked at Mr. Lukas, who shook his head amusedly. “Well, I stand corrected, don’t I? Here you are.” He passed over the small metal key into Jon’s hand. “Good luck, you lot. Try not to get spooked.”

  
  


Straightening his coat again, Mr. Lukas disappeared back into the shack. The wooden door slid shut behind him, and then – aside from a few traces of fog that sept underneath the floor – it was like he hadn’t been there at all.

  
  


All four children froze a moment, looking at each other, marveling at an unintended obstacle subverted.

  
  


“Martin, that was _brilliant,”_ Georgie praised first, walking forward and beaming at the bashful boy. “ _Camping._ That’s what we ought to have said in the first place. I didn’t even think Mr. Lukas would speak to us, much less anything else.”

  
  


“What was that bit about the wedding ring?” Melanie followed up. “Jon, why’d you end up having his ring?”

  
  


“It’s from the archaeological – it’s something me and Georgie dug up from the ground. I didn’t know whose it was, but looked important, so I kept it around. Martin, how’d you know that it was his?”

  
  


“I didn’t!” Martin defended himself. A thick red flush had spread over his face. “I mean, not _really,_ but I thought that it might look similar enough that he wouldn’t notice the difference if it wasn’t actually his? A-and – it was just a chance, anyway, when I saw that he wasn’t wearing one. I’m … ” He trailed off, clearly uncertain if he was going to finish his sentence, before finally: “Good? At talking to adults. Most adults.” His gaze fell on Jon. “Not Ms. Robinson, she’s terrifying.”

  
  


Jon would certainly have to bear that in mind. He was not good at talking to anyone – not people his own age, not people older than him, _certainly_ not people younger than him. Jon had once spoken to a baby that hadn’t seemed to mind his presence, but likely because the infant wasn’t verbal enough to make it known that Jon was a deeply annoying little boy.

  
  


He jolted once as Melanie let out a whoop. “ _Yes!_ Jon – “ She took the key from his hand and started to race towards the dock, where a collection of paddleboats were tied to the dock. They had all once been blue, but long days under the sun had peeled the paint back to an unappealing gray. “All of you! Let’s get going, we’ll be able to get there before the moon’s up!”

  
  


Georgie’s feet pounded on the dock soon after, causing Jon and Martin to half-heartedly jog behind. Melanie and Georgie immediately slid into the front two seats of the paddleboat, where the peddles were that would keep them going. There were two seats in the back, facing backward. Living in a two-person household, Jon hadn’t ever had an opportunity to need the two seats in the back, but he questioned the efficacy of having two passengers sit an opposite way to the drivers.

  
  


Melanie leaned outside of the boat to undo the padlock that tied the boat to the docks. “Alright, you two, get on. We should get going before he changes his mind.”

  
  


Jon looked at the few inches of space between the dock and the boat. He imagined falling right down through that crack, into the water below. He’d heard once that watersnakes liked to hang out in the shallows, near docks and other manmade structures. Jon tried to squint into the water to see if he could see anything slithering.

  
  


“Are you scared, Jon?” A soft voice asked behind him. “I could give you a hand if you needed help getting on the boat.”

  
  


Well, he was hardly going to embarrass himself in front of Martin, was he? “No,” he answered flatly, and stepped out from the dock and onto the paddleboat. He ended up stumbling at some point during the process – which caused him to lurch forward, nearly losing his bag into the waters below. He heard Georgie scoff a little at him.

  
  


“Honestly, Jon, it’s like your feet haven’t got a link with your brain.” _Why do people always claim I don’t have control over my limbs._ “You okay?”

  
  


Nothing bruised. Nothing damaged. “Yeah,” he returned. The paddleboat dipped a little as Martin stepped onto it, settling himself in the seat beside Jon. They weren’t _seats_ proper, more like moldings made out of plastic, and they were rather close. Jon’s knee was pressed against Martin’s and there wasn’t much to be done about it, now.

  
  


“Is everyone ready?” Melanie called out, fixing a look behind her. “We’re not turning back once we go.”

  
  


They all murmured their assent, and Jon could sense a wave of uneasiness pass over all of them. Up until now, they could all return back to their homes and everything would be fine. They had all played the game where they’d each told their mothers that they were staying over at Georgie’s house, and they were all close enough to Georgie that nobody had called to make sure. Well, except for Martin, but Jon could only assume – given his presence there – that his mother hadn’t verified his story.

  
  


But now – as soon as they left the dock – it felt like they were doing something very dangerous indeed.

  
  


Melanie was the one to finally break the silence. “Alright! We’re _doing_ this, everyone! Let’s go find some _ghosts!”_ Next to her, Georgie let out an enthusiastic and shrill _whoo!_ Of agreement. Next to him, Martin clapped politely.

  
  


Jon remained silent. He was instead focused on peering over the edge of the boat into the water below. Nothing squirmed there, but the sun had fallen so low that he didn’t think he’d be able to see it either way. Just him, Martin, Georgie, and Melanie on a hunk of plastic in the middle of a lake. Jon gripped the fabric on his knees tightly and tried not to sway.

  
  


The boat lurched forward. Georgie and Melanie had begun to pedal. It was not a smooth journey . Each pedal seemed to jerk the boat in its own minute way, and Jon flinched as they floated beyond grabbing distance of the dock. Mr. Lukas’ shack started to recede into the background. He realized he was starting to shiver and thought it best to blame it on the cold of the lake, should anyone ask.

  
  


“You okay, Jon?” Martin whispered next to him, so lowly that he couldn’t be heard over the girls’ conversation in front of him. “It’s okay if you’re scared, you know. _I’m_ a little bit scared.”

  
  


What other option could Jon give? “No,” he snapped. “Being scared is for babies.”

  
  


As soon as he said it, he realized that it wasn’t the best thing to say. Martin wasn’t crying, not really, but his lips screwed up as if the idea of crying wasn’t out of the question. Jon had meant to convince him that he wasn’t scared, that it was impossible for him to be scared, and instead – well. He’d hurt Martin’s feelings.

  
  


He didn’t like hurting anyone’s feelings. Jon knew that he could be accidentally rude sometimes. Sometimes, he was even intentionally rude, and he didn’t even know why. It just seemed like the right thing to do at the time, and it was only after the fact that Jon realized it had actually been rather uncalled for – it seemed very unfair to all parties involved.

  
  


Of course, he couldn’t _apologize._ That would turn this into a Thing – and besides, apologizing would basically be admitting that he was scared, and he was _not_ going to do that. Martin was going to think he was a baby.

  
  


“That was very smart of you, Martin,” Jon instead said. He tried to keep his eyes fixed on the coast. On Mr. Lukas shack. On the forest beyond. “Noticing that Mr. Lukas wasn’t wearing his wedding ring. I didn’t even notice and I was right there.” A moment passed between them, and Jon tilted his head to look at Martin. “Sometimes people tell me that I’m a little oblivious.”

  
  


Martin made a faint noise, and turned his head to look at him, too. Even if there were a few inches of lateral space between them, Jon was nevertheless close enough to Martin to hear his breathing. And certainly smell his body odor. _That_ wasn’t great. “What’s oblivious mean?” He asked after a second.

  
  


“It means – sometimes - “ Jon chewed on the definition in his mind. “Sometimes I’m stupid with noticing things about other people. Things around me.”

  
  


“Well, I don’t think you’re stupid at anything.”

  
  


“Oh. Thank you.” Jon didn’t know what else to say to that. The way Martin was looking down at him, he certainly seemed to believe it, and Jon felt another wave of guilt at calling Martin babyish. Martin seemed very nice. He felt like his grandmother would call Martin _sensible._ “We’re going to be okay,” he reassured him, in an even smaller voice than before. “Ghosts aren’t real, so – nothing’s going to hurt us.”

  
  


“Are you sure?”

  
  


_No._ “Yes, of course I’m sure. If ghosts were real, it would be taught in schools by now.”

  
  


“That makes sense,” Martin considered, and Jon saw him lean back on the seat with a little less tension. Jon knew what he was saying was stupid, but it seemed to cheer Martin considerably, and that made him happy.

  
  


He turned over his shoulder and saw Georgie and Melanie dutifully paddling their merry boat along, and – in the distance – the island came into view. There was thick forest cover in it, but even from here, he could see the dark boards that made up the exterior of the Magnus House.

  
  


Two large bay windows peeked out underneath roof tiles on the opposite ends of the house – the glass seemed dark, but they were not broken. Still, some of the roof had started to sag underneath its own weight, giving the entire home a different mood than what it had doubtlessly been built with.

  
  


From this distance, it looked like the Magnus House was glaring at him.

  
  


  
  


-

  
  


It hadn’t been more than twenty minutes after Peter had said goodbye to the merry band of leeches (or, rather, three leeches and a parrot) that his phone rang. He swore both loudly and colorfully, stomping over to his landline. Elias had been on him to go about getting a cell phone, so that he could be reached whenever he would like, but Peter couldn’t _really_ see the benefit to that.. Why would he want Elias to be able to reach him anytime he would like? Besides, he didn’t want to be faffing about with all that technology nonsense.

  
  


The damnable fog still curled around his legs, making the small shack smell like mold. _Euch._ He reached for the phone and pulled up the receiver and held it to his ear. “I’m coming back soon. There’s no need to hurry me along. Start dinner and I’ll be there to finish it.”

  
  


Elias’ disappointed sigh was audible on the other side of the receiver. “What’s keeping you, exactly? You should’ve closed up an hour ago already.”

  
  


Peter looked down to the broken fog machine waiting by the door. It still hummed in the background, though thankfully it was rather indistinguishable from the sound of the generator that powered the shock. It spewed forth its contents in great abundance. He had been concerned, at first, that he really shouldn’t have been breathing in so much of the fog – but he’d been trying to fix the fucking thing for an hour and hadn’t died yet.

  
  


“ _Please_ tell me you’re not still mucking about with the fog machine, Peter. I _told_ you. If you can’t fix it, just bin it. We wouldn’t have used it until next October anyway.”

  
  


“No, no, no no no. I told you I’d fix it, and I fixed it.” If anything, Peter considered, he had fixed it _too_ well. “I’m late because – “ Well, it wasn’t stretching the truth that much. “I was cleaning up the shack, ended up finding the wedding ring, so you can stop hounding me about where I left it. And then this little gang of children wanted to have a go in the paddleboat, and I figured I’d go ahead and let them.”

  
  


He winced. Maybe claiming goodwill towards children wasn’t the best way to take, given Peter’s usual (rather negative) thoughts on the younger generation in general. Elias was silent, and Peter wondered just how thoroughly he was going to be chewed out by his husband.

  
  


“Did they give their names?’ Elias instead asked, and Peter noted that his tone was … curious. Almost … pinched.

  
  


Peter had to rack his mind for that. One of them had given his name, hadn’t they? The big pudgy one that looked like he was dressed to go lie around on the beach. God help him if he could remember the name, though, he hadn’t really cared much when it had been given to him. “Ehm,” he hemmed.

  
  


“ _Peter.”_

  
  


“Can’t rightly say if they did or not. You know, I don’t think that they did. There were four of them, though. Two girls, two boys, and – yes, that’s right, one of the girls had an eyebrow piercing.” He had remembered that, because he hadn’t liked it. Too young to be shoving metal through their skin. He ought to have told them about the time he’d seen a man impaled by a harpoon, _that’d_ set them right. “And one of the boys was wearing this awfully colored shirt. I mean, just really dreadful.”

  
  


Silence, again, on the other side of the phone. Peter turned to look out the window. The paddle boat was just starting to dip over the horizon. _Good on them,_ he thought to himself, _sleeping out in the middle of the woods, all by themselves. I remember doing that at their age._

  
  


“Have they already gone?”

  
  


“Whuh – I mean, yeah, probably around twenty minutes ago. Why?”

  
  


“You’re going to need to listen _carefully.”_

  
  


Uh-oh.

  
  


“I’m going to take the car and I’ll be around in half an hour. We’re going to have to _stop_ them from getting too far into the Magnus House, Peter. Do you understand?” Peter blinked a few times into the receiver of the phone. Elias didn’t sound frantic – his husband hadn’t sounded frantic in his entire life, spare intimate moments. But he was speaking as if he was showing him how to detonate a bomb. “We’ll take your boat and bring them back. It will all be fine.”

  
  


“What’s going on, sweetheart?” He hadn’t really been in a pet name sort of mood, but now – well, he was concerned that Elias had gotten himself in trouble. What kind of trouble could he get into concerning a bunch of children? “They’re just little rugrats. Nothing to concern yourself with, they’ll survive the night.”

  
  


But Elias clearly wasn’t listening. Instead, he made a noise as if a lightbulb had gone off and he went on: “You said you’ve fixed the fog machine, Peter?”

  
  


He looked down at it. It belched a particularly opaque blurb of fog at him. “Yes?”

  
  


“Fantastic. _Bring it along.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it for this week's update! And hereupon we embark to the Magnus House. I realized I liked writing this AU's Elias and Peter more than I thought I would - there's something very fun about shrinking their very evil, very apocalyptic natures into something more fitting a Scooby Doo villain. Thanks all for reading!


	8. Entering the Mansion

Why did Martin agree to do this? There was no need to do this. He didn’t _want_ to do this. He didn’t have a special interest in parapsychology, in ghosts, in _anything_ at all that would require him to go stomping through a falling-down old house that was, actually, _very_ much bigger when you were standing right in front of it and seemed like it would swallow you right up, especially bigger boys named Martin Blackwood.

  
  


Standing in front of the Magnus House, Martin had to face the fact that he had _really_ just agreed to do something terrifying. For a _boy._

  
  


And, yes, yes, maybe it was to make sure the boy was safe and to give him a friend in his corner rather than to make the boy like him (though that was a desirable side effect), but it was nevertheless for a _boy._

  
  


The very same boy who was crouching in front of the house, gleefully digging through the weeds and other overgrown muck that had overtaken the garden some time before. Martin raised his head to see Melanie and Georgie setting up their camera to get exterior shots of the house, looking consummately professional. The paddleboat had been tried up at the dock behind them; the moon had risen and Martin was … _scared._

  
  


Better not to be scared alone, he supposed. He walked over the overgrown front lawn to Jon and knelt next to him. Jon was currently digging through the mud like a possessed rabbit, using both hands to clear it away. “I do archaeology with Georgie a lot,” he mumbled by way of explanation.

  
  


“Okay,” Martin agreed, reaching forward to pull back some of the overbrush. Jon suddenly shot his arm into the pile up to his wrist, and came back with a palm full of …

  
  


“Gold?” Jon whispered, letting the gold nuggets roll around in his hands. Martin curiously rose an eyebrow and reached forward to pull a few out to himself. They did appear to be, indeed, a series of glittering gold nuggets just resting in the overgrown garden in front of the Magnus House. “Georgie and I found one just like them next to Mr. Lukas’ wedding band out in the field.”

  
  


In the back of his mind, Martin wondered if they weren’t real. He knew Mr. Lukas (and Mr. Bouchard, for that matter) was extremely wealthy, but he didn’t really know _how._ Was it really so unbelievable to think that they just had a mountain of gold like Scrooge McDuck?

  
  


He pressed his thumbnail into the rock, and found that a sliver of the gold came away and lodged there. Underneath was just – well, a rock. A tiny gray pebble. “ _Oh.”_ Martin showed it over to Jon. “Look? It’s, like. It’s like aquarium gravel. It’s just a coating.”

  
  


Jon looked at the little handful of gravel in his hand and mimicked Martin’s action until he was squatting with a gray pebble in his hand. “It’s to decorate the garden,” he murmured almost to himself, before he looked over his shoulder and called out: “ _Georgie!_ There’s no gold in England! It’s just a garden decoration!”

  
  


Some twenty feet away, Georgie had managed to set up the camera. She’d folded a tripod up into her bag to mount it on, and – Martin privately thought - it looked to be a _very_ professional set-up. Melanie was standing in front of the camera with the Magnus House in the background, and at Jon’s shout, she glared daggers across the small space.

  
  


Jon didn’t seem to notice – and neither, it seemed, did Georgie. “ _Georgie!”_ He called again, waving the bit of rock up in the air. “It’s a garden decoration!”

  
  


Even from some distance away, Martin saw Georgie’s shoulders slump. “Cut!” After reaching for a button on the camera, she turned to face Jon properly. “That’s great, Jon.” Martin could read on her face that she didn’t think it was great at all, actually, or if it was great, it was something that could’ve waited a few minutes. “Maybe you can go see if it’s the same ‘round the back so Mel and I can get some exterior shots?”

  
  


“We ought to. Martin, come on.” Not bothering to dust the dirt caked onto his knees already, Jon was up and moving around the side of the rickety old place. Martin _certainly_ did not want to be out of eyesight of Melanie and Georgie, but he also _definitely_ did not want to leave Jon entirely alone, so he went around the back with him.

  
  


He didn’t like to think of himself as a weak-willed person. He didn’t think he was, really, he felt very strongly about some things, including not letting people down. And if he put his foot down here – said that he was _not_ going into some creepy house, no way, no how – not only would Melanie and Georgie be let down, _Jon_ would be let down. Jon would think he was some sort of crybaby, like he’d implied in the paddleboat, and Martin wasn’t going to let that happen.

  
  


No, Jon was going to think he was _brave._ He rolled his shoulders back, tilted his chin up, and tried to breathe a little easier.

  
  


Jon was on his knees and scrabbling around in the back garden again. It seemed like the garden wrapped the entire way around the gray estate. The Magnus House looked like it was made out of gray wooden siding, though it was so warped and pockmarked in places that Martin had no idea how it was still standing. Probably it wouldn’t be standing for much longer, because the entire house sagged and seemed to bulge slightly at the bottom.

  
  


Around the back, there was a glass greenhouse attached to the back of the house. Whatever had grown in there clearly had found enough resources to survive, because most of the glass panes were shattered and large leafy plants were growing out of it. Moss covered the surviving panes, seeping out the bottom like some sort of sludge.

  
  


Not all of it was green. Some of the plants were flowering beautifully – inside the murky glass, reflected against the moonlight, Martin could see bursts of red and blue and purple there.

  
  


It was very pretty, actually. Martin nudged Jon’s shoulder to try and get his attention, but he was currently making a small pile of golden rocks next to him. _Oh, okay,_ he thought to himself, raising his eyes to the back door of the house.

  
  


It was open.

  
  


At first, Martin thought that perhaps the door had ripped off its hinges or had rotted away to nothing. No, the door was still there, laying almost flat against the siding of the house. He could see inside – the back door led to a kitchen; Martin could see an antiquated stove against the wall. Beyond that, the rest of the house was enshrouded in darkness.

  
  


His breath caught in his throat. Again, he nudged Jon’s shoulder and received nothing. A flutter of irritation burst through him. _For god’s sake, Jon, the gold rocks don’t matter!_ He stuck his hand out and shook Jon’s shoulder more severely, to which he received a frustrated expression. Martin pointed wordlessly towards the door.

  
  


“Oh. D’you think someone went in? Well, someone would’ve had to gone in.” Jon pushed himself up from the garden soil and walked towards the door.

  
  


“Jon, I don’t think that’s the best idea – “

  
  


“I’m just looking.” Jon held both his hands out to Martin and then folded them behind his back. “Look. Not even touching.”

  
  


And, true to his word, Jon did just look at first. He nearly folded himself in his half trying to look inside the old house, craning his neck fully inside the doorframe. “Martin,” Jon suddenly started, “Can you grab my tape recorder from my bag?”

  
  


His bag was currently resting among the overgrown weeds. Martin went over and retrieved the old tape recorder from it and held it out to Jon curiously. It was kind of a cool-looking piece of equipment, all things considered. Retro. Didn’t require as much set-up as the cameras out front. And nobody cared about how you looked when using a tape recorder; he wouldn’t need to worry about his acne or his frizzy hair with it.

  
  


Jon took it from him and held it up to his face. With his thumb, he depressed the red _play_ button. “Archaeological record of Jonathan Sims,” he spoke into it, still peering into the house. “And my attending assistant – “

  
  


The tape recorder was thrust in his direction. Martin leaned forward. “U-um, Martin Blackwood. Hi?”

  
  


The tape recorder was returned. “After finding that the apparent gold retrieved from the field was nothing more than garden decoration, Mr. Blackwood and I are now investigating the open door on the back of the Magnus House.” He squinted hard behind his glasses. “Leading to what appears to be an unused kitchen. I can see a closed refrigerator, a stove, and an open pantry. There appear to be mouse droppings over most of the floor.”

  
  


“ _Ew,_ Jon.”

  
  


Jon ignored that commentary. “The ceiling appears to soaked through with water damage. I can see that most of the crockery –” _Crockery!_ “Appears to be in the cabinets, though the cabinets have been left open. I can see no sign of paranormal activity.”

  
  


Then Jon took a step over the threshold.

  
  


Into the Magnus House.

  
  


Martin made a blind swipe for his shoulder and jostled it, causing Jon to drop the tape recorder. It landed on the linoleum with a loud _smack,_ and the tape stuttered for a moment before continuing to record. Jon glared at him and retrieved it. “I apologize for the noise. I was just _assaulted_ by my assistant, Mr. Blackwood.”

  
  


“I _really_ don’t think we should be going in without Melanie and Georgie,” Martin insisted. “That’s all.”

  
  


Jon shrugged his shoulders, unbothered. “We were going to go in anyway. Besides. I’m just going to stay in this room, Martin. There’s no need to worry. As soon as we’re done, we’ll go back out towards the front and get them and do this properly.” He pushed his shoulder away from Martin’s hand and took a step further into the old kitchen.

  
  


_It was just a spooky old house. Ghosts weren’t real. It was just old, but the kitchen seemed structurally-ish sound, and they were going to be fine._

  
  


Martin found that, out of his mantra, the only thing that seemed to matter to him at that moment was just _ghosts weren’t real._ If ghosts weren’t real, then they had nothing to fear, really. They had to be careful on everything else, but nothing wanted to _hurt_ them.

  
  


And he had to protect Jon from everything else.

  
  


He took a breath and stepped into the kitchen. The smell of the house hit him first. It was _terrible._ Martin had been cleaning his bathtub once and had found that mold had started to grow along the shower curtain, and Christ, it was practically the very same smell. And decaying wood, and old things, and _ugh._

  
  


It was certainly a different feeling from the outside, too. Even on an island, there was a sense of _space_ while outside. Fresh air and moonlight and plenty of places to run if something was chasing you. The Magnus House felt like it was trying to squeeze him. Martin cast a wary eye around the kitchen.

  
  


Everything was just as Jon said, minus the – _oh,_ no, there was a dead mouse sitting just inside the pantry, poor little guy. Martin cautiously took another step inside, away from the open door. He wished he could open up the entire side of the kitchen the same way.

  
  


Jon was trying cabinet doors and drawers. “Silverware is present in the drawers,” he announced, “One, two, three, four … “ Martin had started to tune him out while he looked around the kitchen.

  
  


The connecting door to the kitchen led to what appeared to be some sort of den. Through the moonlight pouring through the windows, Martin could see an outline of a fireplace (that looked like it hadn’t been touched in some time). Old bookcases lined the walls, though it was much too far away to see any of their contents. And the moonlight seemed to illuminate one small object perfectly: an empty water glass, resting on the little end table next to a perfectly comfortable-seeming red chair.

  
  


Martin’s hand went to his chest. Just like the ghost story. That one teenager Emma, eaten by the fire with a glass of water right next to her. Burned to bits. Martin squinted to see if he could see any bones resting there, but the back of the chair cast the rest of it in shadow.

  
  


“Thirty-four knives,” Jon finished next to him. Martin could hear the clinking of silverware together. “One, two, three, four, five –”

  
  


“Jon,” Martin whispered, going over to Jon again and gesturing towards the den. “There’s where Emma died.” A beat passed. “You know. _Allegedly._ According to – you know. What people say.”

  
  


Jon’s head shot up and he looked towards the den, saw what Martin had seen. And Martin knew that he saw some sort of fear in his eyes, there. The fear that Mrs. Robinson was wrong – that people _had_ died here. That their ghosts were watching them rifle through their silverware – their _crockery –_ like nothing was the matter.

  
  


“We might want to get back to Georgie and Melanie.” Jon’s voice suddenly sounded hoarse. He looked back to the open door, and Martin wanted nothing more than to go back to the shoreline. Yes, they would sleep out there maybe, but they would be far, far away from the spooky house. They could talk and trade fun stories and become _friends,_ not practically piss themselves from fright in the Magnus House.

  
  


Jon raised his tape recorder to his face again. “We – we are cutting our investigation short to reconvene with the rest of our team, Georgie Barker and Melanie King. We think our efforts may be more collected as a cohesive unit.”

  
  


At the time, Martin was making frantic _turn-it-off-turn-it-off-turn-it-off_ gestures in Jon’s general direction. He hardly wanted to be eaten alive by _whatever_ because Jon needed to have a sufficient ending for his recording session. Finally, Jon pressed his thumb on the record button and released it with a _thunk_ and the whirring recorder slowed to a halt.

  
  


Did the house get … _louder_ around them, or was Martin just more aware of it? No, it wasn’t that the creaking and settling of the house had increased in volume, but it felt like it had _settled_ over Martin like a net.

  
  


He wasn’t sure how he must have looked. Terrified out of his mind, probably, or maybe it was just that he wasn’t moving that spurred Jon to action. Because he felt Jon’s fingers wrap around his forearm to get his attention and Martin looked down.

  
  


“We’ll rejoin them, Martin,” Jon reassured. His eyes were _so big_ behind his glass lenses, and Martin felt his heart flutter inside of his chest. It was a really pretty shade of brown, wasn’t it? Martin strove to think of a metaphor that he hadn’t read thousands of times.

  
  


Try as he might, he couldn’t force himself to think of anything but rabbit fur. He’d seen plenty of rabbits when he would sit in the woods and write poetry, and they just always looked so friendly! Even when they nevertheless would sprint away from him after Martin moved a muscle, they never meant him any harm. And their fur always looked so soft and welcoming, thick and brown and twitchy. Yes, Martin had decided that he really liked rabbits.

  
  


It wasn’t really poetic, though, was it? Saying that Jon’s eyes reminded him of rabbit fur would be like a _really_ weird insult. Or, like, almost like he was flirting with him? Which – wasn’t what was going on, at all, it really wasn’t.

  
  


Besides, with Jon’s hand around his forearm, Martin wasn’t sure if he could say anything. Instead, he just nodded and took a step forward towards the door.

  
  


And in that moment, a massive wind gusted and hit the house head in. Martin heard the entire house creak like it were flinching – and the back door _slammed_ shut against its hinges, paint chips raining down from the ceiling.

  
  


Cast suddenly into darkness, Martin and Jon screamed in fright and ran.

  
  


***

  
  


“We’re going to have to retake that,” Georgie spoke from behind the camera. Melanie’s eyebrows furrowed together in confusion, and Georgie had to raise her voice to be heard above the wind. “ _We’re going to have to retake that!”_

  
  


Only a few minutes after Jon and Martin had retreated to the rear of the house, the wind had started to pick up around them. A few raindrops splattered against the top of Georgie’s head. She hadn’t heard that a storm was coming, and this didn’t seem like it would be a big one – but nevertheless, the wind was making it _really_ hard to pick up any audio.

  
  


In front of her, through the camera’s tiny viewscreen, Melanie was trying to hold her own against the wind. It blew her black hair straight away from her face, the purple streak almost hidden in it, and then just as quickly blew the entire mass over her eyes. Letting out an impatient grunt, Melanie squeezed her hair back into a ponytail.

  
  


“Right!” Georgie shouted on the other side of the camera. “You’re ready!”

  
  


“Today, with the guest appearance of Jonathan Sims and Martin Blackwood, Georgie Barker and I set to investigate potential paranormal activity found within the infamous Magnus House.” Melanie was shouting, now, and frustratedly brushed loose strands of hair away from er face. “The legend goes, three teenagers wandered into this house and never came out. It is said that their spirits – as well as the spirits of the original owner, Jonah Magnus – still haunt these very walls, and – _bleugh!”_

  
  


At the very moment, a very large leaf had the misfortunate of being blown directly into her face. She wiped it away with a grimace, before scrubbing both of her hands against her face in disgust.

  
  


The trees weren’t giving them any leeway, Georgie noted grimly. There were tall trees on this island, trees that had initially obscured the Magnus House from the point of view. They were shaking and rustling in the storm, as good as a warning. _Abandon all hope, ye who enter here._

  
  


That was from Dante’s _Inferno._ She and Jon had struggled through the first canto of the work in a very slow, plodding pace before giving up in frustration. _Abandon all hope_ hadn’t even _been_ in the first canto. Sometimes Jon had the patience for wading through thick books, and sometimes Georgie could see him practically shelve it mentally with a label that said _for when I’m older._

  
  


Georgie had felt an ounce of guilt for sending Jon around the back, but sometimes Jon didn’t have the most social awareness and they _had_ needed to film this and he’d been testing Melanie’s temper something awful. Besides, Martin, the boy who had that serious crush on him, would look after him. They’d be fine.

  
  


“How was that!” Melanie shouted, and Georgie reached for her headphones. She hooked them up to the camera and pressed playback.

  
  


Although she could see Melanie’s lips move through the little viewscreen, the only thing that the camera picked up had been the howling winds. Completely unusable. Melanie seemed to understand this just from Georgie’s grimace, and let out a loud groan of complaint.

  
  


A drop of rain settled on Georgie’s glasses, and she pulled away from the camera to wipe them clean. “We’re going to need to film indoors!” At least they’d already gotten some good exterior shots, even if the clouds hadn’t worked in their favor. She pulled the camera off the tripod and handed it delicately off to Melanie, who immediately stuffed it under her sweatshirt.

  
  


The ponytail hadn’t lasted long, and was hanging loose and stringy around Melanie’s face. Still, Georgie admired the look of determination about her that seemed to shine through the rain. _They were going to film this, damn it, come hell or high water._

  
  


Georgie just hoped that the water wasn’t exactly too high. She lifted the tripod off the ground and, without hesitation, they both mounted the stairs. One stair bent dangerously under Georgie’s step. Melanie awkwardly cradled the camera under her sweatshirt while fiddling with the doorknob in one hand.

  
  


The door swung open easily, depositing both girls onto the front room.

  
  


At first, all Georgie could feel was relief – it was _dry_ and _still_ in here. So still. Too still. She felt like she was breathing in air that had been there a hundred years. But that seemed small potatoes in comparison to outside. As soon as they shut the front door behind them, the sky seemed to open up entirely. They were caught in a monsoon.

  
  


“I’m going to fire the weatherman,” Georgie muttered under her breath, which was a statement that she often heard her father say but didn’t think it was _actually_ a thing adults could do. She _had_ looked at the weather before this sort of thing, being responsible. No rain.

  
  


Melanie withdrew the camera from under her shirt and started to screw it into the top of the tripod. “Heard somewhere that ghosts can affect the weather.”

  
  


Sensible. Georgie nodded. Melanie was screwing in the camera at a bad angle, and she gingerly took her girlfriend’s hands away to do it herself. “Could be. I suppose spooky stories never start _‘it was a warm and cloudless day’.”_

  
  


That, somehow, made Melanie laugh and Georgie’s cheeks warmed considerably. “Exactly.” Her head jerked towards the back of the house – and then the front – and then Melanie’s face fell. “I probably ought to go get your boys,” she sighed out. “Will you be okay here?”

  
  


Although Georgie could theoretically see how Jon could be _one of her boys,_ she wasn’t sure when she had adopted Martin. She’d barely talked to him. “Yeah, I’ll be okay. Just – “ She glanced out through the window, at the rain splat-splat-splatting against it. The wind roared loudly enough to shake it in its pane. “Just be careful?”

  
  


To that, Melanie just gave her a crooked smile. “Course I will!” And, brushing past her, Melanie went out the front door. Georgie couln’t hear the creak of the deck under her feet. For all that it mattered, it seemed like Melanie just disappeared the second the front door closed behind her.

  
  


Georgie had to fight the urge to press herself against the window to keep eyes on Melanie, but she’d seen what bad storms could do to windows – particularly old ones.

  
  


Instead, she turned around and surveyed the rest of the house. It smelled like mold. It was hard to tell where the creaks were coming from, exactly, because with every gust of wind the entire house flinched. Georgie walked over to the mirror on the wall, coated thickly with dust.

  
  


Cautiously, she raised her sweatshirt sleeve and brushed some of it anyway. A curious black girl looked back at her, and Georgie smiled at herself in the mirror.

  
  


She wasn’t scared of this old place, not really. Certainly, she recognized some of the danger inherent to crawling around an old house with not even their parents aware of their whereabouts, but she wasn’t _frightened_ of them. After all, only a very small fraction of ghosts were even the violent kind. And if these ghosts _were_ the violent kind, then she’d existed in their space for a whole five minutes and they hadn’t thrown one plate at her.

  
  


In fact, Georgie thought it best that they sleep in the Magnus House tonight instead of on the forest floor out aways, but she was going to wait to float that idea to the others until they’d gotten all their footage. She looked down and saw a cockroach skitter across the floor, over her shoe, and she wrinkled her nose. Gross.

  
  


Just down the hall, she could see a large painted portrait of a man. He was sitting primly with his hands folded in his lap, eyes boring holes into the viewer. A masked owl sat on a perch behind him. Georgie wondered if Jonah Magnus (as given by the bronze nameplate at the bottom) actually _owned_ an owl, or if he had requested the owl be painted in. People did that sometimes, to add a symbol to the painting. Georgie always fancied that she’d like a capybara painted onto hers.

  
  


Jon would have a lemming. Not because of the intentionally running oneself off a cliff – which wasn’t true, anyways, Jon had told her about that – but because of the obnoxious, never-ending chittering and pretending like he was about six feet tall at all times.

  
  


And Melanie would have some sort of bull, probably.

  
  


She heard a creak coming from down the hall and Georgie whipped her head around to look – only to see Melanie clutching a tape recorder in her grip. Something in Georgie’s blood went cold. Grimly, Melanie marched up to her and shook her head.

  
  


Her girlfriend was soaked from head-to-toe. Georgie could see where she had come from, given the little puddles she left behind with every step. Her shoes seemed to squish with it, and Georgie saw that she was gritting her teeth from the cold.

  
  


“I couldn’t find them,” Melanie announced. “But this was on the kitchen floor.”

  
  


“You couldn’t – you couldn’t _find_ them?”

  
  


“No. I looked around the back for a while, but –” Her hands went up to her shoulders, to try and give her some semblance of warmth. “I think they must’ve ran in from the storm, same as us.”

  
  


_That_ wasn’t good. For all that Jon pretended not to be scared, Georgie knew that he was probably the most scared of all out of all of them. And Jon barely cried when he was scared. Instead, Jon got _stupid_ when he was scared, which was funny because he ordinarily was a very bright sort of person.

  
  


“We have to find them,” Georgie concluded. Melanie nodded without hesitation.

  
  


It touched her that Melanie agreed so readily. Melanie didn’t care for Jon. Not for any sort of silly jealousy sense, but because Melanie preferred people to get to the point with things – even Georgie labored on things too much sometimes – and Jon preferred to paint a picture with his words. Melanie also stood up for herself and was ready to throw a punch, and Jon sometimes forgot that he could curl his fingers into a fist.

  
  


Digging through her bag, Georgie extracted an extra sweatshirt. Melanie peeled her soaked one off and gratefully took it. “Thanks, Jojo.” Fidgeting and having trouble with the arm and head holes, Melanie asked in a muffled voice: “Where do we go, Captain?”

  
  


Georgie looked around the big old manor. Jesus, they would spend half the night searching for those two boys before even touching their camera. Which was _fine,_ obviously, Georgie wasn’t prepared to have Jon or Martin die because they needed their footage, but boys could be so _frustrating_ sometimes.

  
  


Closing her eyes, she tried to listen to the sounds of the mansion, as if she could hear their footsteps on the old wood. Nothing but the wind and the rain. Georgie frowned and felt a finger tap right in the center of her forehead, and she jumped and opened her eyes.

  
  


Melanie was standing about six inches away from her. “Uh, why aren’t we going?”

  
  


“Trying to think for a second, Melanie.”

  
  


Maybe trying to preternaturally sense where the boys had gone wasn’t going to help. Georgie let out a frustrated sigh and rubbed the back of her neck. “You said they weren’t in the kitchen, right? So maybe they ran off … upstairs?”

  
  


“Best a shot as any. Upstairs aren’t as creepy as, like, basements.”

  
  


Georgie could agree on that. Basements held all sorts of unknowns, being closer to the earth. Granted, being so high above the earth was _also_ less than ideal, but Georgie wasn’t sure if Jon would think it through that much if he was scared. She certainly wouldn’t.

  
  


Throwing her bag over her shoulder (and leaving Melanie’s soaked sweatshirt on the table in front of the mirror), Georgie turned to examine the stairs. They seemed stable enough. Three steps confirmed that it would, at a minimum, hold her weight. And besides, she thought to herself wryly, if she fell through the floor, the boys would _definitely_ know where she was.

  
  


“Wait.”

  
  


Turning around on the fourth stair, Georgie cocked her head curiously and looked at Melanie.

  
  


Melanie was looking fidgety. She was picking at the edges of her cuticles again. She hadn’t mounted one single stair. “Isn’t that where – you know, um. The urban legend. Michael? Isn’t he the one who died upstairs, because of the hallways?”

  
  


“Well – _yeah,_ maybe.”

  
  


There, they stared at one another in silence and mutual confusion before things clicked for Georgie. Oh, right, Melanie was scared of getting lost in the hallways. Georgie wasn’t – they were just hallways, after all. And while she didn’t know how a teenager would get lost in the hallways and end up dying, she was confident in her ability to keep things straight. It wasn’t that hard. Every maze could be solved by just touching the right hand wall and following it.

  
  


“You can wait down here if you want, you know. You don’t have to come up with me. I’ll shout if I find them and bring them down.”

  
  


_That_ seemed to light something in Melanie. “ _No,”_ she refused, stepping on the first step after Georgie. Her hand went to the handrail to steady herself, even if Georgie couldn’t guarantee _that_ thing’s structural stability, either. “No. I mean, obviously, you’re not going alone, and it’s not like – it’s not like I’m _scared_ or anything.” Melanie shoved her chin up in the air defiantly. “Go on, then!”

  
  


Well, it was one way to get Melanie to agree, and Georgie was glad that she wouldn’t have to go alone. She had seen no evidence of ghosts yet, but it would be just like a ghost to wait until they were all separated to launch in on their attack. Georgie grinned at her in such a way that wrinkled her nose and continued to climb the stairs, up, up, _up_ as far as she could go.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sneaking this in like I'm not a half-week late - my bad! It's been a crazy week, but here we are at the Magnus House and the crew has gotten predictably split up. Thanks all who've read!


	9. The Pit and the Pendulum

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Light child terror

They were downstairs.

  
  


Jon recalled only a few things about their panicked sprint. The door slamming shut behind them had caused him to drop his recorder almost immediately, letting it clatter and skitter across the linoleum floor. Martin was the one who took the first few steps; for a half second, Jon was in serious danger of being _dragged_ due to his unwillingness to drop Martin’s arm. His legs caught up with his head and he sprinted on after him, disappearing into the den.

  
  


The den had a large empty fireplace – a red plush chair – an empty water glass – a chandelier – books upon books upon books – and then they were barrelling through the doorway to the next room – a long wooden dining table – crockery stacked up in the hutch in the corner – a massive painting of the field Jon often dug in – and then they were through the next doorway again, Jon’s breath catching hard in his throat.

  
  


He had spoken a big game, certainly, but in that moment, Jon was absolutely certain that something was going to swoop in down on both of them and snatch them away. Kill them dead. His grandmother would be so _sad_ if a ghost killed him.

  
  


He realized that, if Martin had any sort of rationality at all, he was looking for an exit. Martin was the leader here, Jon could only watch his brightly-colored shirt and follow. That was why they continued to run, down the long hallway, Jon’s shoes squeaking against the wooden floors. Every step caused something in the old mansion to _creak,_ which meant that whatever was chasing them was getting closer, closer, closer – !

  
  


Martin swung open another door, revealing a set of stairs that plunged down into darkness. Jon was grateful that they hadn’t gone barrelling right down the stairs. He read that falls were one of the main causes of death for the elderly. And probably, young boys. Maybe not Martin, with a bit of padding on him, but Jon’s bones were _very_ close to his skin.

  
  


Driven by fear, Martin let go of his arm and fled down the stairs. He soon disappeared into darkness, almost like it had eaten him up completely and left absolutely no trace that Martin had ever existed.

  
  


And Jon was left alone, standing at the top of the stairs.

  
  


The most logical thing to do would be to follow Martin, he knew. The monster – or ghost – or _whatever –_ it wasn’t going to care that Jon needed to have a second to think about things, but down there was a _very,_ very dark basement.

  
  


And Jon didn’t like the dark.

  
  


Not at all.

  
  


Not one bit, actually.

  
  


But then Jon heard the sound of a door slamming, far away. It wasn’t in the same direction as the back door … at least, Jon was pretty sure. They’d run through so many doors and went in so many directions that he’d gotten more than a little turned around. But one thing was clear, and it was that something else was in the house. Probably nothing nice.

  
  


He desperately hoped that Georgie and Melanie were okay, and that they had stayed outside away from the ghosts. Georgie was his best friend, after all, and who else would he hang around with if she were to be killed by a ghost? Not to mention that she had a great big family, who would miss her. That was a lot more than his grandmother.

  
  


No, he wasn’t going to go and find her. No way that he was going to lead the ghost right to her. Hiding with Martin seemed like it was the only option, darkness or no. Screwing up his courage, Jon reached for the railing and made his way down the stairs. The stairs didn’t seem like they were sturdy enough to hold him, but nevertheless nothing broke under his weight while Jon slowly, slowly inched his way into the darkness.

  
  


Finally, his feet found smooth concrete on the ground. Nothing in the basement granted any sort of visibility. For all that it mattered, Jon was just walking straight into a black void. He held his hands in front of him like he was some sort of old-fashioned zombie, taking long, staggering steps to make sure that he didn’t accidentally walk into something that would poke his eyes out.

  
  


In the end, that sort of posture was futile, because something grabbed him from _behind._

  
  


Two large arms wrapped around him, one going over his shoulders, the other under, and Jon was being held back. For the second time that night, Jon cried out and started to struggle as the aggressor started to drag him backwards. _Fiona,_ Jon thought to himself desperately, _Fiona died down here. Could this be Fiona?_

  
  


Well – he certainly was not going to be Fiona.

  
  


Lashing out, Jon sunk his teeth down into the fleshy forearm across his collarbone.

  
  


Martin yelped out and suddenly the arms released him. Losing the sudden burst of momentum, Jon stumbled back and fell against Martin’s chest – and then, both of them were on a heap in the concrete basement door. Jon blinked up into the darkness, dazed.

  
  


“That _hurt,”_ Martin accused beside him. This close, Jon could see that Martin was rubbing his forearm. He could see the shine of blood. Not much – that explained the rusty taste in Jon’s mouth, he supposed.

  
  


Jon was unapologetic. “Why didn’t you _say_ anything?”

  
  


“Why did you _scream!_ I was trying not to – you know!” Martin shook his head. Neither boy had raised their voices above scraggly little whispers. “In case anything’s down here!”

  
  


“Well, I think they know now!”

  
  


At the realization, both boys’ heads darted around to look at the rest of the basement. Jon couldn’t see far, not in the darkness. It seemed like Martin had pulled them both behind a small pile of boxes. Usually, Jon would have the curiosity to start rifling, but it was too dark for that. They both scrabbled backwards until their backs hit a wall.

  
  


“I’ve got … I’ve got a torch, hang on.” Martin shuffled through his bag for a moment before withdrawing a flashlight. He flicked it on, and a beam of light shot across the room.

  
  


The basement was curiously sparse for what Jon had imagined was a very eccentric sort of man. There were boxes scattered everywhere, cardboard ones, which was funny because Jon would date the construction of this house as pre-1817 (the invention of the cardboard box), but he supposed that people could’ve used this house as a storage facility after then. Strange to think that someone properly owned the house.

  
  


The rafters on the ceiling were a little moldy. Wherever Martin shone the light, motes of dust swam in the beam. Jon instantly remembered the book on parapsychology. Ghosts could take the form of motes of dust – or was it light? Or maybe both? Either way, Jon caught sight of a particularly active one and shuffled a little closer against Martin’s side. Their knees brushed together, and Jon was grateful that he wasn’t down there alone.

  
  


Eventually, Martin shone his light down on the floor. And Jon was violently – immediately – intensely grateful that Martin had dragged him back.

  
  


Most of the floor was missing. Jon would say that it had rotted away, but cement didn’t rot much, did it? Still, it looked rather like the floor had dissolved like tissue paper, leading to – what? Jon could only see darkness. They weren’t close enough for even Martin’s flashlight to illuminate what lied underneath. Jon had been no more than a meter away from falling inside.

  
  


He swallowed deeply. Martin flicked the light to the side, illuminating the stairs instead. “Sorry,” he whispered. Martin’s voice was shaky. “Need – need a minute.”

  
  


“That’s fine. That’s fine.” Jon shut his eyes, focusing instead on the breathing of a warm human body next to him. “I’m. I’m really sorry, Martin?”

  
  


“For what?”

  
  


“For getting you into this.” It was a rare moment of introspection, and it made Jon feel … _sad,_ for some reason, but nevertheless like it needed to be said. At least secrets were easier to whisper in the dark. “For -for scaring you, for. You know, getting you into danger, for … bringing you here. You barely _know_ me and I .. You’ve been so nice, and I – I don’t think I’ve been a very good friend.”

  
  


The word _friend_ hung in the air between them, and Jon saw the beam of light wobble for a moment as Martin switched his flashlight hand.

  
  


Then Martin reached over and took Jon’s hand. It was a little sweaty, but nevertheless, Jon intertwined his fingers with Martin’s and held tight. They were both still staring towards the stairs, as if they might vanish at any moment.

  
  


“I think you’ve been a good friend. Don’t think there are any friend rules, but … “ Martin breathed in so deep and it came out as a sigh. “I don’t have loads of friends. And – I chose to come here, okay? You didn’t _make_ me come here. Yeah, maybe I said yes just to impress you, but – “

  
  


“You wanted to impress me?” It was such a shocking notion that Jon turned his head to stare at Martin, but Martin’s face was impassive.

  
  


“I mean. Yes? I … think you’re really great, Jon. Sometimes I want to be more like you.” Martin snorted. “Okay, _all_ the time I want to be more like you. You know? You’re, you’re. You’re brave, a-and really stubborn, and … “ There, he trailed off.

  
  


“Perfervid?” Jon suggested.

  
  


That made Martin giggle – genuinely giggle, even in the darkness of the basement, with the god-knew-what that lay in wait to eat them upstairs. It made Jon feel really happy, probably more happy than he ought to have been in this situation, to know that he managed to make Martin giggle amidst all of this, and – oh.

  
  


_Oh._

  
  


The realization hit Jon hard, and he almost lurched with the effort of it. He was grateful that Martin wasn’t looking at him, then, because _good Lord_ Jon felt like his eyes were bulging out of his head. _Uh-oh._ This never ended well. The divorce rate in England these days was _very,_ very high.

  
  


“Yeah. Whatever, sure, that too.” Martin shifted beside him, trying to get himself more comfortable on the floor. It was unlikely. Jon’s legs had gone numb a little while ago, and he wasn’t even sure if it was the position or the cold. “We should go find Melanie and Georgie,” he finally added, in a softer voice, like he wasn’t going to emphasize the point if Jon didn’t hear him.

  
  


Jon had nearly forgotten. “Yes. Yeah, we need to.” If they were smart, they were still outside and soaking wet. Even if they still spent the night in the mansion, Jon would feel loads more comfortable if they were at least all together. “Can you keep your light on the floor? To make sure that we don’t fall in?”

  
  


“Yeah, of course.”

  
  


Then they were standing, Martin releasing Jon’s hand. Instinctively, Jon wiped his hands on his jeans before he began to walk. It wouldn’t be difficult to make it to the stairs; there was still plenty of floor. Nevertheless, Jon’s eyes were glued on his feet as if they would suddenly start disobeying his brain and fling himself into the recesses of the strange, strange pit in the floor.

  
  


That allegedly led to the center of the Earth.

  
  


Where, hypothetically, the mole people lived. Jon had read a book on that once.

  
  


While they were halfway to the stairs, Jon paused in his steps and looked over his shoulder. “Martin, could you … “ He bit the edge of his lip, as if admitting something shameful. “I’m curious?”

  
  


“Could I … ? Oh! Sure. Just, um. Stay still.”

  
  


Martin shined the light into the hole. As soon as their eyes focused on what they were seeing, Martin gasped. Jon didn’t say anything so obvious. Instead, he found himself wandering close to the edge of the pit despite himself. His eyes were glued to the inner darkness of the pit. The only thing that stopped him was the sound of his sneakers scuffing along the edge of the hole.

  
  


“Jon?” Martin asked beside him. That was all. _Jon?_

  
  


Jon stared into it with wide eyes, before – as if snapped from a trance – he bolted his head up and stared at Martin.

  
  


“We have to start digging.”

  
  


**

  
  


“Well, that seems to have done it,” Peter grunted. He gave a gesture towards the fog machine sitting on the now-damp island earth. “Look, Elias. It’s gone and fixed itself now.”

  
  


Elias didn’t have the patience to argue with Peter about the difference between _fixed_ and _broken in a different way._ At least the fucking thing wasn’t belching fog across the entire lake (and, it seemed, directly into their faces), even if he now couldn’t use it to frighten a bunch of stupid little schoolchildren.

  
  


That was fine. He was in the _right_ here. He was fully within his rights to stride in the house and pull them out by their _hair_ if so desired.

  
  


Peter was certainly going to have it tomorrow. Perhaps Peter believed that Elias wasn’t livid at him, but Elias had learned very early on the ability to store the anger in a quaint little box and open it up when it was most convenient. Those children should never have been allowed to come onto the island, and yet, Peter was ever-the-fool.

  
  


That this could all have been averted if Elias had simply told the full plan to Peter didn’t cross his mind for more than an instant.

  
  


Miserable from the rain, Elias stepped to approach the Magnus House. He could’ve gone through the trouble of refurbishing it, making it livable, but it had found its uses in other ways. And there was something quite tantalizing about being the sole surviving heir to the Magnus family – about owning a home that made little children scurry home at night.

  
  


And perhaps, if he put the fear of God into these little children enough, four more would scurry home. He was already planning on bringing their custodians in to make sure they knew the _extent_ of the trouble their children were in.

  
  


The wind howled around him, buffeting his suit jacket and whipping his hair around. Elias wasn’t scared, not really. These were children. They were probably shaking in fear and wetting themselves in some obscure corner of the house. But this was far too close. Far, far too close.

  
  


Peter came up from behind him after he finished securing the boat, pressing a hand to the small of his back. Elias tilted his head back up to glance over his face. “Go wait by their boat,” he murmured. The last thing he needed was Peter oafing about his family’s old home – or, for that matter, the children escaping because Elias couldn’t wrangle four irritants at once. “Stop them if they try to escape.”

  
  


“Are you sure about this, Elias?” Peter asked. It wasn’t that Peter hid a particularly large heart in his barrel-chest himself. Frankly, Peter’s indifference to the world at large was part of his appeal. Everything else in his life was put on mute when he was around the man. Very easy to put things in perspective, that way. That was why it surprised Elias to hear Peter’s concern. “They are only children.”

  
  


“Of course they are, Peter,” Elias warned, his eyes locked onto the front door of the Magnus House. “But they’ve been _naughty.”_

**

  
  


While Melanie couldn’t personally see how Michael Shelley had allegedly gotten himself lost up here and outright died (seemed rather dramatic, if you asked her), she had to admit that it was a lot _bigger_ than she’d imagined. They’d been using Georgie’s ‘put a hand on the right wall and follow’ method, but Melanie wasn’t sure how well that method held when you introduced 3D dimensional space (that is, another floor).

  
  


But they’d been walking in mostly silence, occasionally calling out Jon or Martin’s name. They heard nothing, and Melanie could see a worried look start to grow in Georgie’s eyes.

  
  


“They can probably handle themselves,” Melanie offered after a moment of silence. “You know. They’re not babies or anything.”

  
  


“ _I know,”_ Georgie nearly snapped at her, and Melanie was struck with how aggressive it was. For what it was worth, Georgie backtracked immediately. “Sorry. I know. I just, I worry. This wasn’t even their idea.”

  
  


“You don’t have to _constantly_ worry over Jon, right? He’s not your problem.”

  
  


“He was never my _problem._ He’s my friend. Friends worry about each other. _”_

  
  


Melanie hated to say it. Melanie really, _really_ hated to say it, but sometimes she was too jealous. There was nothing to be jealous of, not really, but – Georgie and Jon were _best_ friends. And she’d only known Georgie for a year. She didn’t know Jon at all. Sometimes it felt hard to compete – and she knew that it wasn’t a _competition,_ but sometimes it felt like it. Most times she felt like she was the only one who felt like it.

  
  


So sometimes, to offset it, Melanie did what she did best. She was a little louder, a little feistier, a little more contrarian than she really needed to be. Not necessarily at being a better person, but trying to get center stage so that made Jon would get out of the limelight.

  
  


She hated doing all that for a _girl,_ because maybe if she’d thought things through a little more none of them would be in this situation, but there it was. If she didn't worry so much about looking like some scared little baby in front of Georgie.

  
  


“Sorry,” Melanie whispered, and there was no way Georgie heard. She wondered if Jon and Martin were even up here, or if they had fled somewhere else entirely. “I’m sorry,” she repeated, a little louder, and Georgie twisted her neck to look at her.

  
  


“For what?”

  
  


They were both holding flashlights, making their way along yet another long corridor. One of the drawbacks of the ‘follow the right hand wall’ rule was that sometimes they would reach a doorway and have to dip into one of the other rooms, only to be back right where they started. But, in its own way, it was probably helpful – Melanie didn’t put it past either boy to hide under the bed or in a closet.

  
  


“I dunno.” She did know. “You’re so _calm_ about all this. Like, self-confident. Methodical. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you freak out in my life.”

  
  


“Oh. There must’ve been sometime.”

  
  


“Nothing! You’re made of _steel,_ Georgie.” Melanie felt warm at the thought, because she did like that about her girlfriend. Not only was Georgie kind of _mad_ stunning, but it felt like having someone she could rely on, at all times. Someone who wouldn’t call her impulsive or nutty or ‘overcompensating’, whatever _that_ meant. Georgie would always hear her out. “And your ex-boyfriend is, like, the walking little historian.”

  
  


Georgie snorted loudly.

  
  


“I’m just saying! It makes me feel like I’m some sort of - “

  
  


“Little overexcited baby?”

  
  


Well, Melanie did _not_ like how quickly Georgie leapt to that. “I mean. Yeah?”

  
  


Suddenly, Georgie let her hand fall from the right hand wall. She turned around to face Melanie with her hands on her hips, twitching her nose to one side. _Uh-oh._

  
  


“Melanie King.”

  
  


_Uh-oh uh-oh uh-oh._

  
  


“I cannot believe what comes out of your mouth sometimes. Honestly!” And with that, Georgie strode over, put her hands on Melanie’s shoulders, and pecked her on the lips. Georgie really needed some chapstick.

  
  


When she pulled away, her hands remained on Melanie’s shoulders. “You’re _literally_ the most exciting person I’ve ever met. Seriously, I can be doing anything with you and still have loads of fun. You get ideas I never could’ve thought in a _thousand_ years and you’re up for _anything_.”

  
  


Melanie would’ve responded, of course, even to laugh – but it rather felt like her heart had just stopped.

  
  


“You’re my girlfriend, too, by the way, in case you’ve forgotten! I don’t secretly madly want to go back to Jon or anything. He’s my friend, and you’re my friend, and that’s all – you know. That’s okay. There’s not like, a maximum number of friends I can have.”

  
  


“I – well, I _know_ that,” Melanie finally found her voice. “Obviously. Not trying to control that or anything.”

  
  


“And _you,_ Ms. Melanie King, make me feel less boring. You know?”

  
  


“ _You?_ Boring?” Melanie scoffed, crossing her arms over her chest. “I’d never believe that.”

  
  


“Well, it’s true! Sometimes I -” Georgie chewed the inside of her cheek. “I don’t know, it’s like nothing in the world seems exciting, at all? That’s why I became friends with Jon in the first place, you know, he’d – when everything in the world seemed really boring, he’d tell me all these cool stories and fun adventures that people have had. But you _take_ me on them, Melanie. Seriously!” She held her hands out, indicating the wide expanse of hallway around her. “Do you think I’d be here in a million years if you weren’t my girlfriend?”

  
  


_Jesus,_ it felt like something was in Melanie’s eyes. She resisted the urge to reach up and rub them. The last thing she needed was accidentally pulling on her eyebrow piercing again. “I – I guess not, huh?”

  
  


And then she was being hugged, hard. It felt rather like Georgie was trying to squeeze the life out of her. And then they were spinning while they were hugging, which made Melanie start to giggle, which made _Georgie_ start to giggle, and then they were just one laughing, spinning, hugging mess together in the middle of the hallway.

  
  


“Alright!” Melanie finally laughed out when she started to feel dizzy. “Alright, I get it, I’m the best thing that ever happened to you in your entire life, I _know.”_

  
  


“And don’t you forget!” Georgie backed away from the hug, bringing her sweatshirt sleeve up to wipe at her eyes. “Come on, then, we really ought to find them before they get themselves into trouble.”

  
  


And suddenly, the Magnus House felt a lot less spooky.

  
  


The natural path using the right hand-method led to yet another bedroom. Melanie privately had to wonder how many parties Jonah Magnus had had in order to justify so many of them. Like she had for all the previous ones, Melanie got on her knees to look under the bed and see if any sort of scarred little boys looked back at her.

  
  


There were eyes under the bed.

  
  


It was too dark to see underneath the bed what it was, really, beyond (a) big and (b) scary and (c) _staring,_ and wait a second, no, (d) definitely had long claws that it probably used to kill things with. Right before Melanie’s brain could kick in to act, the creature emitted a godawful _growling_ noise – not like Georgie’s cats did when they were angry, but rather the sound a hypothetical demon would make right before it dragged you straight down into hell.

  
  


The creature started to crawl towards her from under the bed, and Melanie scrabbled to her feet. “ _Georgie!”_ She cried out. “Run!”

  
  


And run they did. Melanie took the lead on it, but she could hear Georgie’s sneakers clomping behind her. “What was that thing?” Georgie half-shouted, half-gasped as they ran a corner. Melanie couldn’t hear anything behind her, of course, but that didn’t mean the creature wasn’t lying in wait beyond some unseen corner.

  
  


“A monster, I don’t know!” Nothing about the ghost story had included _monsters_ in the midst of it, of course, but Melanie wasn’t going to split hairs on that matter.

  
  


Both girls turned the corner and faced a long hallway. There were no other turns, no other escape exits, not even a _window._ The only thing there was a door right at the end of the hallway. Given that turning around wasn’t an option, Melanie made the only decision available to her: _hide._

  
  


They fled inside. Melanie didn’t even cast a cursory look around the room – beyond seeing that there was a window, a bed, and a mirror – before she was fiddling with the door behind her. The only locked it seemed to have was one of those door chains, newer than the ancient wood it was installed in, and Melanie hoped to god that was enough to stop a monster.

  
  


“Mel?” Georgie asked, sounding a million miles away. There was a tug at the bottom of Melanie’s jacket, and she turned around to – with Georgie – survey the rest of the room. “You’re going to want to take a look at this.”

  
  


**

  
  


Very little went on in the library that Mrs. Robinson was unaware of.

  
  


Of course, there had been the conversation between Georgina Barker, Jonathan Sims, and Martin Blackwood about going to the Magnus House. She had heard that from behind the stacks, shelving books.

  
  


And it had been impossible to not notice Jonathan voraciously reading every ghost story they had in the library for the past week. Nor Melanie King asking for help to laminate/waterproof a town map. Nor Martin Blackwood timidly asking if there were any children’s versions of the _Odyssey_ that he could please read, please. Nor Georgie Barker checking out a wilderness survival guide.

  
  


One could learn very much about a child from what they read in the library.

  
  


The only reason she had figured out that it was happening _today_ was because Jonathan Sims had not shown up at the library. So, presumably, the child was nearly dead or off investigating a haunted house, because nothing else would keep him there. Mrs. Robinson had Ms. Sims’ phone number, because Jon had come to the library sick as a dog on more than one occasion.

  
  


Shame. She had been hoping to dissuade them from such foolish notions. Even if the only ghost in the Magnus House was age, it was still no place for young children who were so easily frightened. Unfortunately, she had not seen Georgie or Melanie – the ringleaders, she presumed – since.

  
  


However, Mrs. Robinson was in possession of a little sailing boat. And this would not be the first decrepit old ruin she had explored in her life.

  
  


She had waited until the library was closed before setting out. She hadn’t thought to pack much – just her phone, in case she came upon the island to see four dead children, and a book that would be left on the boat.

  
  


There was a thick layer of fog out over the lake today – though, curiously, it seemed to follow more of a pattern. There was a curving, distinct line of fog that seemed to cut through the lighter stuff hovering over the lake, generally following the direction of …

  
  


Oh, _god damn it._

  
  


Why Peter Lukas had brought the bloody fog machine that nearly suffocated everyone to death during that little Halloween event at the library, she had no idea.

  
  


(Frankly, at the time, she was almost grateful for it. She had wanted to keep the event a small, intellectual event meant to educate the children how Halloween interpretations differed in the British Isles. However, some parents had sunk their damnable little claws into it and wanted to make it _fun.)_

  
  


But if Peter Lukas was at the Magnus House, then Elias Bouchard was not far behind. She would avoid _those_ two men at all costs. Reaching for the rudder of the boat, Mrs. Robinson made a soft turn to the right. She’d come up from the back, then.

Mrs. Robinson was a striking figure, on hand on the rudder, cutting through the fog like a masthead on a vessel. The weather had started to clear up above her (she was grateful, of course, because the wind had practically torn apart her braid and was whipping gray hairs about her face in a most annoying fashion), letting the moon part between the clouds and strike against the lake above.

  
  


Magnus House rose up in front of her as Mrs. Robinson started the slow semicircle around the island. She couldn’t see anything out front, of course – but still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that mischief was afoot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all know badgers can make some terrifying growling sounds? wild


	10. Saving the Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Mild violence against a child

Both Jon and Martin were on their knees in the pit. Through tricks of shadows and their own fearful eyes, what seemed to be a pit to the bottom of the Earth was only four feet or so deep. Jon still didn’t know why someone had dug such a hole in their basement, though there were several geological processes that _could_ result in something similar. Jon couldn’t let himself focus on that, though, because of what lay in the pit.

  
  


Even with only Martin’s flashlight to guide them by, Jon could see that the pit had been partially filled with _books._

  
  


“I’ve got the third volume of that encyclopedia collection!” Martin called out, showing a thick book in Jon’s direction. Genuinely overjoyed, Jon took it from his grasp and put it up with the rest.

  
  


Each book that they had found so far had the library name stamped on the inside cover. That was when Jon realized what he was looking at, exactly. The gigantic horde of stolen books – thrown in the dirt! Although none of that seemed _damaged_ in any way, Jon felt strangely antsy as he brushed dirt away from their covers and pages.

  
  


Nearly all of the books were elaborately bound with rough pages. While Jon didn’t yet know who was at the bottom of this, he _did_ want to shout at them a little. The mold alone could absolutely destroy these books! Rats! Badgers! All sorts of things! And they seemed so precious, with their thick covers with intricate designs. Granted, Jon had flipped open a few and found that they didn’t contain anything particularly interesting (he had yet to complete a full literary analysis, but there was a certain typeface and way of sorting columns that made Jon internally flinch), but _still._

  
  


Martin had been a very good listener to that sort of ranting, and a very good archaeological assistant. So far. Perhaps, if Georgie really _had_ outgrown such things, he’d take Martin out to the field instead. It would be nice. Martin’s company was … nice.

  
  


“This one’s just got loads of pictures of, um, birds in it?” Martin muttered, mostly to himself, and Jon stepped over the prodigious pile of books in order to examine it.

  
  


There was a creak at the top of the stairs. They had had the good fortune not to hear anything – or perhaps Martin had, but Jon certainly had been far too absorbed in their treasure-hunting to hear anything. Even – shamefully enough – Georgie and Melanie had fled from his mind. But Martin gave him another shove on the shoulder after that creak, and Jon looked up.

A bright light was shining in their faces. Almost in retaliation, Martin shone his back.

  
  


In one of the most perplexing moments in Jon’s life so far, his local librarian was standing at the stop of the stairs. She had a heavy industrial flashlight clenched her hand; her gray hairs had come loose from her brain and stuck out at odd angles to her head. Jon couldn’t tell whether she was pleased or simply _shocked,_ but she was squinting against Martin’s flashlight and Jon quickly slapped at his hands to stop blinding the librarian.

  
  


Ms. Robinson’s light lowered from the boys to the pile of books at their feet. Slowly, Jon saw her extract her phone from her pocket.

  
  


Jon opened his mouth to try and explain: _Mrs Robinson we found a bunch of books in this pit and also the ghost story wasn’t real which we knew because ghosts aren’t real but look at all the books that have been stolen are here isn’t that strange and who do you think put them there and –_

  
  


“Fuck,” Mrs. Robinson said.

  
  


**

  
  


“Well, this is just wicked.”

  
  


“D’you think it’s illegal?”

  
  


“I mean. I dunno, it looks pretty old. But it’s not that different than a burial, is it? Just less dirt involved.”

  
  


“I guess so. Mostly I meant the – you know.”

  
  


“Oh. Yeah, I don’t know. Not _illegal,_ I don’t think. Doesn’t hurt anybody. So long as it’s done after death,” Georgie finally rationalized, staring up at the scene before them.

  
  


Thankfully, they’d been in this room for some minutes and whatever had been chasing them clearly had not lost the scent. Still, they kept the door locked while they surveyed the room. What had caught their attention immediately was the glass case set against the wall. It was large – far larger than either Georgie or Melanie – and housed what appeared to be a human skeleton.

  
  


It didn’t have a head.

  
  


Georgie had been concerned, at first, but even if it was some sort of magical angry skeleton – it was in a glass case. And it didn’t have eyes or eye sockets, besides. There was no sort of nameplate on it, but Georgie didn’t think it could be Michael Shelley’s skeleton. It looked _old._

  
  


Her eyes drifted towards the rest of the room. Unlike Magnus House at large, everything in it looked a few decades more modern. A cot was resting underneath the window, neatly made. A laptop (bulky and password-protected) was resting on top of a dresser. Some toiletries were scattered on the windowsill, and it didn’t take a genius to know that someone had been _staying_ here.

  
  


Georgie’s first inclination was that someone else had the same idea: to investigate the goings on at the Magnus House. Someone far more prepared than they were. But there was no equipment, no camera, no signs of any actual _production._

  
  


It was just very, very weird.

  
  


Melanie had moved, too, somewhere behind her. “Wow! George, check this out!”

  
  


She had found, in the corner, what looked to be an old wooden cane. It was one of the fancy ones (Georgie’s grandmother used a cane, but it was lightweight gray metal and she hadn’t decorated it _at all),_ ornately carved. On the top of it was a little carved owl. It looked like the owl on the library posters that told her only _‘who-sers did drugs!’._

  
  


Where its eyes would be were two tiny green jewels, glittering in the light. Clearly it was some sort of walking cane, but with the way Melanie was swinging it around, it may as well have been a bat. “You’re going to break it, Mel!” Georgie whispered, but then – at seeing the way Melanie’s face fell a little – added: “But it _is_ dead cool.”

  
  


She was ready to suggest that they start making their way back. While cool, they had more important things to be investigating and couldn’t stay here forever.

  
  


In a flash, the door to the room _lurched_ open before the chain caught. The person on the other side had practically slammed themselves into it, because Georgie heard the base of the chain _creak_ in the old wood of the door.

  
  


Oh no.

  
  


“Now, now _,”_ Mr. Bouchard whispered on the other side of the door. Goosebumps raised all over Georgie’s shoulders. She couldn’t see him, not really, but could see his cheeks and lips as he tried to squeeze himself into the small gap. “You know you’re not supposed to _be_ here.”

  
  


_Oh no._

  
  


“ _We’re so dead,”_ Melanie intoned to Georgie, and Georgie couldn’t help but share the sentiment. How had their head teacher – of all things – gotten here? They were _dead,_ and Elias was going to have to haul their corpses back to their parents.

  
  


Mr. Bouchard grunted while he shoved the door again. The creak of the door lock sounded like nails on the chalkboard. “Open the door, Ms. King. I’m _not_ going to ask again. This childish and idiotic endeavor has gone on long enough.”

  
  


And suddenly, Melanie’s lips were being pressed against Georgie’s ear. “ _He … doesn’t … know … you’re … here. Hide under the bed.”_

  
  


Georgie looked at Melanie like she’d just told her to hop out the window. While she didn’t say anything – Melanie was right. It didn’t seem like Elias had heard anyone but Melanie. But what Melanie suggesting was _also_ crazy.

  
  


_I’m not going to leave you,_ Georgie tried to telepathically communicate. She pulled away from Melanie and stared her down, eyes flashing.

  
  


The door strained again, and she could hear Mr. Bouchard’s irritated growl.

  
  


“Can you – can you please just listen to me?” Melanie was plaintive, even if her voice was so quiet that Georgie couldn’t tell if there were any real _voice_ in it. “Please, Georgie. Let me do _something_ for you.”

  
  


And – Georgie agreed.

  
  


It was tempting, after all. She didn’t want to deal with Mr. Bouchard. She didn’t often _deal_ with Mr. Bouchard, not like Melanie did. And Melanie looked like she was about ready to shove Georgie under the bed tooth-and-nail if she waited a single second longer in deciding, and Georgie took a deep breath.

  
  


_Christ,_ she wasn’t sure if she loved Melanie King – adults often told her that she wouldn’t know what true love was until she was older, which was frustrating – but if this didn’t feel like it, she didn’t know what would. She pecked Melanie on the cheek and internally vowed to make it up to her later.

  
  


Georgie dove under the cot. There was just enough space for her to tuck her hair and her shoes underneath without being hidden, while keeping a wary eye on her girlfriend up above. Melanie gave Georgie a sad little wave, and then moved to unlock the door.

  
  


She moved too slowly.

  
  


With one last _push_ against the door, the chain lock came away completely. Georgie heard the tinkle of the falling metal above, even, the splintering of the wood door. It swung open so quickly that it nearly struck Melanie in the face, causing her to stumble backward and fall.

  
  


“ _Finally,”_ Mr. Bouchard growled. Fully inside, Georgie could see how harried he was. His hair was unkempt and sticking up in a few carefully gelled spikes. His tie looked loose around his neck, and his shirt wasn’t tucked in. She wondered if she had encountered the same demon that had chased them down the hallways. “You don’t know how much trouble you are, Ms. King. _Much_ more trouble than you’re worth.”

  
  


“I – I - “ Melanie was _scared._ “I just wanted to investigate what was going on, sir.”

  
  


It wasn’t like Mr. Bouchard was an exceptionally tall man, though he did boast about a foot and a half over a twelve-year-old girl. He took a step forward and Melanie, her chest rising up and down with every harried breath, took a step back. “Oh, you _wanted to investigate what was going on?”_ His voice pitched up several notches in clear mockery. “Did you, now?”

  
  


Melanie’s sneakers scuffed over the cane on her way to the wall. Her eyes fell down – and then met Georgie’s under the cot. Georgie was ready to spring out, to _help_ for whatever good it was worth, before she saw Melanie shake her head.

  
  


“I know you can read, Ms. King. Which means you _know_ what curiosity did to that poor little pussy-cat.”

  
  


Mr. Bouchard swiped his hand forward and grabbed Melanie by the upper arm, hard. She let out a squeak of combined fright and pain. Mr. Bouchard started to drag her off, but before he could get more than a few steps, Melanie’s other hand closed around something on the ground.

  
  


“ _Let me go, creep!”_ And, with surprising aim, Melanie swung the cane right at Mr. Bouchard’s kneecaps. She found her mark. The wood _cracked_ against his knees (or maybe that was the kneecap itself, Georgie wasn’t a doctor) before snapping in two entirely. “Georgie! Run!”

  
  


Georgie didn’t need to be told twice.

  
  


For the second time in a half-hour, both girls ran. Georgie pulled herself out from under the bed, her entire body covered in dust, and made for the door. Mr. Bouchard had fallen, but made a swipe at her legs like some sort of zombie while Georgie ran past him.

  
  


There was no way Mr. Bouchard would be down for long, and she didn’t want to think about how angry he’d be when he caught the student that just kneecapped him. They had to find the boys and get out of here _pronto._

  
  


Melanie was in front of her, only looking back at her when they rounded the corner. Although Georgie didn’t have a flying clue what routes they’d taken to get to that room, it was nevertheless much easier without having to investigate every water closet and bedroom on the way. And, somehow, Georgie was far more worried about Mr. Bouchard finding them than the demon that had been chasing them earlier.

  
  


Naturally, they had to slow when they reached the stairs. In addition to the _thump-thump-thump_ of their feet, Georgie could hear the harsher, quicker footfalls of something up above them. Mr. Bouchard, it seemed, had risen again.

  
  


“We gotta get Jon and Martin,” Georgie breathed to Melanie on the stairs, who nodded in response. “That – oh, we’re so _dead._ We’re so dead.”

  
  


Melanie’s expression turned sour – and then there was another nod.

  
  


They reached the end of the stairs and were running through hallways again. It struck Georgie that Mr. Bouchard, all things considered, probably hadn’t gotten here in a piddly little paddleboat but rather his husband’s boat-with-an-engine. They’d be overtaken immediately, so maybe the plan ought to be revised to finding the boys and fleeing into the woods to live forever.

  
  


That is, if Mr. Bouchard hadn’t found (and subsequently brutally murdered) Jon and Martin first. Worry flooded Georgie at that thought. Melanie could beat up Mr. Bouchard, no problem, but Jon wasn’t exactly the _aggressive_ sort. He’d get pulled apart like a chicken wing. And Martin – well, it seemed like Martin would just dissolve into a puddle.

  
  


They reached the stairs to the ground floor, and again, Georgie heard the uneven footfalls of Mr. Bouchard up above. For all Georgie knew, they were going to run right into Peter Lukas’ chest. She had no proof that Peter Lukas had ever forcibly drowned a child before, but she also had no proof that he _hadn’t._

  
  


Hitting the ground floor running, Georgie and Melanie finally paused in one of the narrow hallways. “Should we split up?” Melanie asked, breathing hard. “To find them and get out of here.”

  
  


The suggestion was anathema to Georgie. “ _No,”_ she insisted. “We stick together. Always.”

  
  


And, in a moment of spontaneous determination, Melanie and Georgie shook hands. Georgie felt like she’d taken some sort of blood pact-without-the-blood – but just as serious.

  
  


There was nobody in the kitchen, nobody in the front room, and nobody hiding in any of the closets (Georgie knew from experience that Jon could fold himself into an impressively tiny ball). In fact, Georgie was just about to suggest an awful contingency plan (at what point did they just presume the boys were dead and leave) before …

  
  


Someone was coming up from the stairs to the basement. Multiple someones.

  
  


“Ms. Robinson?” Melanie asked, confused. But there was their librarian, coming up the stairs with her phone in her hand. And – behind her – Jon and Martin, both with books in their arms.

  
  


Georgie could recognize the library logo from here, laminated on their spines, but that hardly mattered as seeing Jon and Martin – her _boys,_ apparently – unhurt. Jon was actually positively beaming, even if Martin had the same slightly worried expression on her face that he usually had on him. And in that moment, Georgie was filled with so much _relief_ that she was halfway over to them before she even realized her legs were moving.

  
  


She threw both arms around Jon’s neck and squeezed tight. “Jon! I’m so glad you’re _alright.”_ Jon – like herself – was covered in dust, and she wondered if Jon had half as much of a hard time as she and Melanie had.

  
  


Jon looked at Georgie and then at the pile of books held in his arms. “Georgie, look, Martin and I – well, Martin had the flashlight, so – we found the books.” He raised them a little higher like Georgie hadn’t been able to see them. “There’s loads more downstairs, we’re going to bring them to Ms. Robinson’s book, and … wait,” he caught himself, blinking a few times in confusion. “Why wouldn’t we be alright?”

  
  


At that moment, Mr. Bouchard finally made his way down to the ground floor.

  
  


He was standing askew, clearly favoring one knee over the other. One hand was gripping the railing so hard that his knuckles were paper-white, but when he caught sight of Ms. Robinson, his face shifted to match.

  
  


Gertrude only looked surprised for a fraction of a second before she carefully composed her expression into something … cool. Distant. She took a step forward, placing herself in front of Georgie, Melanie, Martin, and Jon. The indication was very clear.

  
  


“Elias,” Gertrude said calmly.

  
  


Elias was a sweaty, huffing mess. Some sort of realization seemed to come over his face at the sight of Gertrude. Georgie could only realize it as defeat. He lowered his head, his shoulders heaving.

  
  


“Gertrude,” Elias breathed back.

  
  


**

  
  


Martin yawned as he and Jon sat on a log. Ms. Robinson stood just nearby. Melanie and Georgie were probably the most active between all of them, having recovered their tripod and camera and gleefully filming the events as they unfolded. Martin admired their perseverance. He felt like he could’ve fallen asleep on this log.

  
  


“But what was he planning to do with the books, Ms. Robinson?” Jon asked curiously.

  
  


Ms. Robinson was eating a bag of crisps next to them. Martin had offered them to her, because before the police had shown up, he had heard her stomach growl and it had seemed like the only kind thing to do. Almost immediately, the police _had_ shown up and she hadn’t had a chance to breathe until right then.

  
  


Martin hadn’t known that police had boats until just that moment, but that seemed to make sense. Pirates needed to be apprehended too.

  
  


They had been the ones to load up the rest of the stolen books on the boat. Ms. Robinson had counted all of them, and had said – with no small amount of glee – that every one of them was accounted for. A stroke of good luck (Martin didn’t think that any strokes were good, but he’d heard Ms. Robinson say that and it seemed to fit).

  
  


One of them was waiting by their (presumably former) head teacher. Mr. Bouchard was in handcuffs and was waiting on the shore. He didn’t look like he was saying anything, but had wrinkled his nose in disgust when Melanie had tried to get in for a close-up. Mr. Lukas – and indeed, the boat that they had come in on – were nowhere to be found.

  
  


“Sell them on the black market, presumably,” Ms. Robinson remarked, crunching in on a crisp. “People will pay a lot of money for rare books, even if they don’t intend to ever read them. We’re only fortunate that he hadn’t had time to transport them yet.”

  
  


Silence settled between all of them, before Jon added, smug: “I knew it.”

  
  


Frankly, Martin didn’t want to take away from things, but there was another worry pin-balling around his mind. “Ms. Robinson, we’re not going to get in trouble, are we?” A beat passed. “Any of us? Me or Jon or Melanie or Georgie?”

  
  


_That_ seemed to shock the old woman, at least to the degree that she raised her eyebrow and looked at him. “Whatever for, Mr. Blackwood?”

  
  


“Um, you know.” Martin gestured – to the Magnus House at large, to Melanie and Georgie filming, to Mr. Bouchard standing on the shore. “For causing a commotion.”

  
  


“ _Psh.”_ Jon snorted next to him. “We saved the _day,_ Martin. We’re not going to get in trouble.”

  
  


Ms. Robinson concurred. “While I don’t know how your parents will react about you all sneaking off in the middle of the night to investigate a haunted house – _I_ certainly won’t be insisting on any punishment. And I doubt Mr. Bouchard will be punishing anyone for a good long while.”

  
  


Martin’s mother definitely wouldn’t bat any eye over this. Honestly, he doubted whether she would even find out. Relief nevertheless flooded him. He hated the idea of his friends – his new friends – getting into trouble even more than he hated getting into trouble himself. “Good,” he whispered out.

  
  


There was some movement over by the shore, and Ms. Robinson shifted. “Stay here. I’ll come back to bring you all home. Thank you, Martin.”

  
  


_Good._ Waking Martin’s mother up in the middle of the night _definitely_ would’ve made some trouble. Ms. Robinson handed the half-empty bag of crisps to him and wandered off towards the shore, leaving Jon and Martin alone. They started to share the rest.

  
  


“Who do you think our new head teacher is going to be?” Jon asked, withdrawing a sour-cream-and-onion flavored crisp from the bag. “Now that Mr. Bouchard is going to jail.”

  
  


Martin had to think. “I don’t know. Maybe Rosie.”

  
  


“Oh, good. Rosie’s nice.”

  
  


“Yeah.”

  
  


They sat in silence, watching Mr. Bouchard be transported onto a boat. The boat sped off, and Martin hummed a little song under his breath. It _did_ feel nice, he have to admit. Finding a load of stolen books and transporting a bad, bad man to prison.

  
  


And he’d held Jon’s hand. Which had been – also, for different reasons entirely, very very nice.

  
  


He took a crisp and crunched it between his teeth. While he would like to hold off on adventures like these for a long while, Martin hadn’t ever had friends like this before. It made him feel – warm. Cozy.

  
  


And just like that, Martin’s world was tilted on its axis when Jon leaned over to kiss his cheek.

  
  


_Ah!_ Martin rose his hand to touch the bumpy, uneven skin where Jon’s lips had been just a second ago. His entire face felt like it was hot, even if he could barely feel his fingers, and _oh,_ Jon had just kissed him. Did that count as his first kiss? Did -

  
  


Oh, he’d really liked that. He’d _really_ liked that. More than he’d ever liked anything ever that he felt for a girl, which seemed _basically_ meaningless in comparison. His stomach felt like it had little termites in it, biting and scratching away.

  
  


He turned to face Jon, staring into the eyes that were only made bigger by his thick glasses. “What was that for?”

  
  


“I like you,” Jon answered simply, turning away to stare at the coast again. “So I kissed you. That’s how things go.”

  
  


“Oh. Okay.” Martin felt shell-shocked, turning to stare back at the shoreline. His hand still covered his cheek like he was protecting the kiss imprint from the wind. _Say something, you idiot. Say something. Oh my god. Say something. Please say something._ “That was nice.” _Not that._

  
  


Thankfully, the muscles in his arms seemed to listen more than any thought in his head. He raised his hand and reached for Jon’s. They were covered in the same residue that covered the crisps, but he doubted that his were any different. Martin grasped his hand and felt his chest grow so tight that he _really_ couldn’t say a word.

  
  


“You know, if you like me too, we could be, ah - “ Jon jutted his chin towards Melanie and Georgie. “Like them. Except, you know. Not girls.” A beat passed. “Boyfriend-and-boyfriend.”

  
  


He did like that. He did like that very much, actually. “Okay,” Martin squeaked out, his tone high and weak, but Jon nevertheless smiled and turned to face him again.

  
  


“Good. I’ll start walking you home from school.”

  
  


Was that the rules? Martin didn’t know that there were rules. Oh, god. He turned to look down at Jon, hoping that the rules would suddenly erupt over Jon’s face like some sort of massive tattoo. But, no. There was only Jon, smiling up at him like Martin had given him a present. “Okay,” Martin squeaked out again.

  
  


_No,_ Jon was going to think that he was being shy. Or that he didn’t really want to be boyfriend-and-boyfriend with him. And Martin really, really did. Because if this was _half_ of what the other boys felt when they talked about girls, then _wowza_ Martin had been under some very wrong impressions.

  
  


He bent his head down to give Jon a peck on the lips.

  
  


Martin didn’t think he’d done it right. He’d ended up clacking his canine against Jon’s front tooth, and Jon _really_ hadn’t been prepared for a kiss, and he was pretty sure he’d breathed out through his mouth at some point, but it was nevertheless Martin’s first kiss and he didn’t think he’d ever feel this sort of feeling ever again. _New._ And _good._ And _exciting._ And _warm._

  
  


“That was nice,” Jon echoed back to him nevertheless, smiling genuinely as he pulled away. Their hands were still interlocked – and then Jon’s eyes dipped down to the bag Martin was holding in his other hand. “Are you going to finish the rest of your crisps?”

  
  


“Am I - oh! No, no.” Martin dropped his hand to push the bag over to him. “Please.”

  
  


“Martin! Jon!” Melanie shouted from across the shore, waving her hands in an attempt to get their attention. Martin wondered if they had seen – oh, _no._ From the ‘ _I’ve seen something I wasn’t meant to see’_ look on Georgie’s face, that smug little smile, they had definitely seen. Oh boy. Martin let out a squeak. “We’re doing interviews! Get your bums down here so we can get you camera ready!”

  
  


Martin looked over at Jon. They were both still covered in dust from the book pit, and Jon’s hair looked like he’d touched an electric socket. His knees were still caked in dirt.

  
  


He was sure that he probably didn’t look all that much better.

  
  


In an impressive display, Jon held the edge of the crisp packet up to his mouth and shook the remaining contents in. He chewed loudly and held out his hand for Martin to take. “Coming, Martin?”

  
  


Martin grinned, staring first at Jon and then out over the lake. He swung his hand out to take his brand new boyfriend’s hand. Getting involved with Jon felt a little like jumping into a whirlpool, but Martin certainly wasn’t going to start complaining. It was the most sure of himself that he’d ever felt in his entire life.

  
  


“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the dastardly Mr. Bouchard goes to jail, Mr. Lukas flees to the Atlantic, and everyone lives happily ever after. Thanks all who've stuck around for this fluffy little kid!AU for this deep horror podcast.

**Author's Note:**

> Updates for this fic will be posted every Sunday!  
> -  
> I also feel like I have to put a little heads-up/reassurance here, just because I know certain segments of the TMA-fandom trend towards the more violent/explicit fics - there's going to be nothing like that here, given the age of the characters (~12) and tone of the fic. This is exactly what it says on the tin: the "mysteries" in this fic aren't going to be any more violent/creepy-crawly than your average Scooby-Doo case or Nancy Drew mystery. Appropriate CWs will be given!
> 
> Also, as an addition, I threw 'quasi Scooby Doo AU' up there because A) I'm pedantic and B) I wanted to clarify that while the rules of the world/the mystery is Scooby Doo like in general, I actually wrote the characters with more of an IT Loser's Club vibe going on, in terms of their ages and interactions - but of course, there's a whole can of (rightful) worms open if I call it an IT AU. So, quasi Scooby Doo it is!


End file.
